Copacetic
by fury-shashka
Summary: Everything is copacetic. Everyone has grown up. And Ginny has to finish the interview. And Lucius has to tell all.
1. Chapter 1

**Hello everybody. I'm still nowhere near being finished this story - it's about 50 000 words right now and only feels half done - but I've had enough pressure put on me that I can give you the first few chapters, at least. Don't murder me if there are big breaks in between updating. It WILL be finished.**

Ginny Potter looked out of her charmed window across from her desk. The day felt long. After sitting at her desk for a time, her back tended to seize up—right in the middle of the spine, big, gnarled knots of muscle.

Her office was cluttered with pictures of her family. Here, Lily grinned toothily at her, aged eight, and flame-haired, a little sprite. There, James and Albus scowled briefly at each other, and then turned to the camera and smiled, and then scowled again. And there—there was the picture of herself and Harry from their wedding day, young and vital and really hopeful.

Ginny shifted in her seat.

Her legs were falling asleep. Her fingers were ink-stained from scribbling with her pen all day. She couldn't properly feel her feet, which was slightly alarming, and now she was sinking back into that mild depression that she got whenever she looked over at her family pictures.

Midday doldrums. Mid-work-week doldrums. Everybody got them. It was the combination of unwashed hair and ill-fitting clothes, ink-stained fingertips and lack of sleep—it got to people. It was getting to her.

That was what she told herself.

Still, as she looked at a photo of her and Harry and their children together, there was a feeling in her stomach the size and taste of a grapefruit—something bitter and hard, something heavy and mournful.

Something was not right.

_And now—now what?_

Ginny sighed and stretched back in her chair, lengthening her legs. She had just turned thirty-eight, and she felt the weight of day-to-day life heavier than ever before.

It wasn't that she was older looking. Well, maybe she was—she hadn't aged as much as Ron or Harry or Hermione had, their faces clearly showing the stress of their "Golden Trio" adolescence. She had skirted that enough, but she still felt ancient, rounding up on forty years old. Her body just wasn't as elastic as it used to be, her breasts sagging just that little bit more, her hair just that little bit more brittle than it used to be, her freckles fading more than she had ever remembered. There were lines around her mouth and her eyes that she had never really noticed before—Luna called them "laugh lines", told her that they were beautiful, but she missed the creamy roundness of her younger face.

Ginny missed riding on a broom. She missed leaning over to spit blood and mucus into the grass after a hit from a Beater. She missed the burn on the inner thigh from the broomstick. She missed being in shape.

She had always been a lithe thing—tall enough to reach properly for a Quaffle, long enough to properly wear a skirt and send the men around her into paroxysms of lust. True, she had never been one of the conventional beauties—not like Fleur, or even Hermione, who had finally grown properly into her wild hair and deep eyes. But Ginny had always been evident, and unique, and startling, and the tautness of her thighs and her buttocks and her neck and her face had always contributed greatly to that.

And now she felt sallow.

More than sallow—pasty and soft, like some pastry gone wrong. The tautness of her thighs was gone, replaced by indented skin, cellulite that appeared when she flexed her buttocks, looking over her shoulder in the mirror. There was a fullness to those buttocks now, too, a doughy malleability that had never been there before—

Ginny tapped her pen on her paper.

She thought of her husband. She often thought of her husband. She had been thinking about her husband for months now—but not in the good way. Harry—nice enough Harry, those wide eyes, that mass of unruly hair, those glasses that she really hated but never told him that she hated. Their wedding day—simple, plain, happy, Ron and Hermione cheering in the background of every picture, her mum crying, praying for many grandchildren, crying, her dad quiet and proud. Their honeymoon—awkward, despite years of having sex beforehand, Harry being put off by the complex nature of her white garter belt and suspenders, Ginny for the first time in her life lying back and just letting a man take control.

It wasn't all bad. It hadn't been all bad. They had had some wonderful times—wild times—nights spent camping in Sardinia, days spent in Tunisia, sunsets looking out from San Francisco, midnights spent fucking up against a wall outside of a nightclub, in the back of Ron's stupid magic car, in their marriage bed.

Ginny felt nothing when she thought of him now.

Nothing. That was what she had been mulling over for months. The nothing. The taste of the nothing, the feel of the nothing. The doldrums.

It was the truth.

It had been the truth for years, now, really. Not just months.

It had never gone sour—it had just faded. That glow from within—faded. But she was always flighty. She had always been flighty. Harry hadn't realised it, had married her stalwartly, wanting to make "things right", wanting to legitimise everything. And she had let him because she had been so _tired_ after the war, after everything. She liked the ease that being his consort afforded her. She _had_ liked it, at first. But now the glow from within—it was gone. And Ginny was surprised that she had lasted as long as she had with him.

When she had been younger, she had dated the boys at Hogwarts relentlessly, sampling, trying out different things, fulfilling different tastes. She had once snogged Draco Malfoy in a broom closet because he had dared her to, he only fifteen, she only fourteen, and when she had felt his erection pressing into her she had laughed and then left him there, standing beside the buckets and the mops. She had given Dean Thomas a lap dance just because she wanted to. She had bitten Cormac McLaggen's neck as he had put his hands down her pants, touching her everywhere.

And now she was nearly celibate. Didn't want to touch Harry. Didn't want to be near him.

_And the children?_

James, fifteen, moody and lanky and every bit the teenager, but smart as a whip, fiercely dedicated to his family despite his feigned indifference. Albus, thirteen and round-faced, sweet and kind and quiet and somehow managing a friendship with Scorpius Malfoy—that always amazed Ginny, but didn't irk her as it did Harry sometimes. And the Lily, her twelve-year old girl, who just a year ago had been one of her closest friends, the apple of her eye, and who had, in the span of a year, turned sullen and sobbing and too skinny, spurting up and up until she was nearly at Harry's shoulder.

They were a patchwork family, sometimes, but they were hers, and she loved them. She loved her children.

But her husband—her husband—

How many years married, now? Seventeen years? Yes, that sounded right—she couldn't even remember sometimes.

She regretted it. God, that was the awful truth to her. She regretted getting married to the Boy That Lived, the saviour of the wizarding world. She regretted it, all the time now. She regretted marrying her Hogwart's sweetheart. She regretted not fucking around more. She regretted having children so young.

Ginny rubbed a hand across her face. Tonight she wanted to talk with Harry properly, now that all of the children were off at school, packed off about a week ago and trundled onto the train.

_The monotony._

It was always so monotonous in her world. Seeing the same people on the platform—nodding vaguely at Draco Malfoy, at Parvati, at Lavender, at everyone else's stupid, sluggish children while trying to get her own brood onto the Express.

It was also monotonous at work—the writing of stupid fluff articles, her transition between Quidditch correspondence and writing full, actual articles.

Ginny had come back to work after taking time off to raise her children because she simply needed the stimulation. Harry had been working extra long hours, being promoted to the head of the Auror Office, and she figured that her children were hardy enough to look after themselves for long periods of time. Hermione liked to baby-sit, anyway, so Ginny had gone back to the Prophet and had easily gotten her old job back. But writing about Quidditch had bored her after a while, and now—

Now she was trying to break into mainstream reporting, and was having a hell of a time with it.

Factor in her age—it wasn't that Ginny was showing her age. It was the contrary, really. But having just turned thirty-eight, which meant she was a year closer to forty—only two years off—_Christ._ She missed flying and the exercise that came with that. She missed the tautness that her stomach used to have before she had produced three children. She missed the pertness of her breasts. She felt too soft now, too lazy, too worn around the edges.

She glanced out the charmed window, catching her reflection in the pane. Still a hungry look in her eyes. Still that red hair, like burnished perfect gold and blood, spilling down over her shoulders. Still that full, snapping mouth, those expressive eyes, the high-set eyebrows. She felt like she wasn't properly thirty-eight. She didn't want to be getting older. She missed being seventeen. She missed being free. Her mouth still looked young. Her eyes still looked young. Her hair was still thick and luscious.

She and Harry hadn't had sex in so long.

Ginny pressed two fingers to the spot between her eyebrows, trying to alleviate her headache.

Fifteen minutes till she had to go home.

_Fuck._

_Fuck._

_Fuck._

* * *

><p>Ginny sighed as she opened the door to the Potter family house.<p>

Even after so many years, she still thought of herself as a Weasley—would often forget her new surname when introducing herself, a fact that made Harry cringe and often made him angry afterwards. It wasn't her fault, really. The red hair, the smattering of freckles across the middle of her nose and along the bowls of her shoulders—she was a Weasley, through and through, physically—people could spot her from miles off.

She missed the Burrow.

Ginny set her bag down on the floor, in the same place that she had always set it—by the front hall table, on the right hand side— and threw her cloak over the railing as she always did.

She inhaled deeply.

Her home always smelled like salt, like something floral—rose, maybe—and then something else underneath, something that she couldn't name. It was familiar, and unsettling all at once.

She had just been too tired to cook tonight. Harry was still at the Auror Offices, so she knew that she couldn't rely on him to make dinner. Sometimes, when the children were still at home, during the summer, James or Albus would experiment in the kitchen, making ridiculous meals for the family, and Ginny would laugh, tie on an apron alongside them, eat with them as they worked. They would rip off pieces of meat and pop them into their mouths, take spoonfuls of sauce from the pan.

She set the takeaway down on the kitchen counter, lay down on the kitchen floor, waited for her husband to come home. Ginny let the cool of the tile soak into her feverish, tired limbs, soaking right in to the bone, lulling her into a patchwork sleep.

Harry woke her up about an hour later.

"What the hell are you doing down there?" His voice was slightly panicky and very angry.

"My back hurt. I was tired. I have a headache." She mumbled her conditions at him.

"I thought you were _dead_."

"Don't be so melodramatic, Harry." Ginny struggled to stand up, noticing that he didn't reach down to help her. She cracked her back as she stretched to the ceiling, and then she nudged one of the takeaway boxes towards him. "Dinner. You might want to heat it first."

Harry stared at her for a long moment, and then opened the box. "Chicken."

"From the pub. I didn't really want to cook tonight. And I knew you weren't going to."

Ginny grabbed her box and tipped the contents right out onto a plate. She didn't even bother to heat it, only sat down at the table, watching as Harry cast a warming spell and sat down, slowly, at the exact opposite end of the table.

She watched him eat, slowly, methodically, pulling apart the pieces of chicken with his knife and fork, his head down, his eyes fixed on his plate. He didn't used to be so. He didn't used to be like that—they used to fuck up against doorways, race each other on their broomsticks, use those bright and shining and glittering happy moments to outweigh the rest of the sometimes mundane, the sometimes dull and mediocre. They used to laugh as their children played in front of them, drink themselves silly with Ron and Hermione, stagger home, cut their own Christmas trees.

With the children all out of the house, it had been different. Lily was in her second year, now, and it had just been odd. And the children were so old—turning into little adults, really, and Ginny loved them fiercely, of course she did, but she felt so much less needed by them now. Maybe it was that both she and Harry had been war-survivors, had raised their children as war-survivors—raised their children to be intelligent and self-sufficient, and prepared always, and to be maybe aloof, tall and proud and figuring things out on their own.

She liked them like that, mainly, but with the children out of the house, she felt old and tired.

Ginny made a sound in the back of her throat, and Harry raised his head.

The two of them looked at each other, and Ginny wondered if Harry felt what she felt—if he remembered earlier times with more fondness, wondered if he wondered if the duskier years of his life were sliding by without any excitement.

Was it excitement she wanted? She didn't know.

"Harry. I want us to separate."

But this was the first step that she could take to finding out.

Ginny was never afraid of conflict, never afraid of speaking her mind—sometimes just too blunt, just too cutting in her aims and needs and words. Harry had never been the best match for that, tended to get wounded by her verbal darts and shrapnel, couldn't take one of her briny, cynical jokes properly, but she had tried to soften herself for him, had really tried—

Harry sat very still across the table from her, looking at her almost curiously from behind his glasses. He didn't speak for a good few minutes, and Ginny refused to feel uncomfortable under his gaze. Instead, she cut a piece of meat and put it in her mouth, chewing thoughtfully, meeting his eyes brashly.

She would not be cowed by the Boy-Who-_Fucking_-Lived.

"Do you want a divorce?" His voice was calm. Maybe too calm. No, calm enough. It was enough.

"I want us to separate and see what that is like." Harry blinked, twice, and his eyes were so green. Ginny continued. "And if we are happier apart, then yes. I want a divorce."

"_Fuck_," Harry yelled, and slammed his cutlery down onto his plate so violently that the china cracked.

Ginny rolled her eyes. "You didn't need to do that. You must have known that this was coming."

Harry had stood, and Ginny watched him carefully, making sure that he stayed in her line of vision at all times. He was a good husband, a gentle sort—they had never, ever come to blows—but he was so aggravated that she wasn't sure if he was going to do anything stupid.

"I guess so—I don't know." He wasn't pacing, but was moving back and forth slowly, sort of rocking on his feet.

"It's just—Harry—we don't _work_ right anymore." She tilted her head at him. "We haven't had sex in almost a year."

"I _know_," he snapped. "I'm well aware." Harry turned, suddenly, and sat down at her feet, up on his knees, meeting her eyes evenly. "I still think you're so beautiful, though."

Ginny had a gag reflex in her throat, which she tried as hard as she could to hide. The truth of the matter was that she had been the one to stop the sex—she just wasn't attracted to him anymore. He didn't need to know that, though. He didn't need to hear her revulsion.

His hands were stroking up and down her thighs. Ginny halted their movement by placing her own palms on top of them.

Harry scowled at her, pulling away from her body and standing up.

"Fine."

"What?" She hadn't heard him properly; he was mumbling away from her, his hands shoved into his pockets.

"I said _fine_," he yelled at her, whirling around to face her. She didn't even blink, only tilted her head at him. "You can find your own damn place, though. I'm keeping the house."

"That's _fine_, actually," Ginny said, strongly at first. She then pushed her chair back and stood, her voice lowering. "Fine for me." He was facing away from her again, and she walked up to him, putting her arms around his waist and pressing her forehead into his back. Harry sighed under her touch, and his hands came down to stroke absentmindedly along her forearms.

Ginny kissed his shirt-covered skin. "It's better like this."

He looked back at her over a shoulder. "Maybe."

"Maybe we did it all too fast, you know?" She loosened her arms so that he could turn in them, wrapping his own arms around her body, and pulling her close. She forgot, often, how tall he was compared to her shorter stature.

Ginny exhaled a little shakily. "Don't tell the kids over letter. We'll let them know around Christmastime. I think it might be better to do it face-to-face."

Harry's face crumpled softly.

Ginny could feel a welling of sadness inside of her. They were both aware of how useless their marriage had become, and were both so, so aware of how the papers would jump upon their separation, how hard it would be on their children, and how, yes, they would miss each other, they _would_.

"I will miss you, you know." She smiled, watery-mouthed, up at him.

Harry nodded. "I know."

"We were friends first." She exhaled softly. "Maybe friends again one day?"

"Maybe," he murmured, his hands rubbing up and down her back. "Maybe—maybe we were never just right for each other. I don't fucking know. I don't fucking know. You were too mean for me, sometimes."

Ginny laughed softly, her head on his chest. "You were too maudlin for _me_, sometimes."

She could feel the rumble of his laugh. "But we made it work. For a long time."

"For a long time," she murmured, echoing him, seeing the stretch of her life without Harry down the road ahead of her, not knowing what was going to be there, not knowing what the future was going to hold for her.

The future, it turned out, had a sense of twisted humour.

* * *

><p>Being back at work was merciful. At least here she had something to do—there was always something to be reviewed, something to be copy-edited, something to be captioned.<p>

It had all gone so quickly. Ginny had moved all of her things out of the house, having found a flat in Muggle London—not Diagon Alley, where she would be recognised living alone instantly—but instead Muggle London, somewhere where she could slip in and out of her apartment without worrying about photographers. The two of them—herself and Harry—had made sure that there were enough bedrooms for the three Potter children to stay in when they were back from school. Harry had insisted on paying half of the rent every month, which had touched Ginny, and simultaneously made her uncomfortable. Moving all of the things out subtly and under the radar had been difficult, but she had managed.

They had managed, slipping things through the Floor, one person by one hearth and the other by another hearth, not talking to each other, not even seeing each other.

Harry had helped her relentlessly, toting things in and out of the house, staying quiet, watching her hawkishly, mutedly.

She sighed and sat down to her newest piece, a tiny 100-word article on the newest Jarvey rebellion. Truly, she believed that the piece deserved a bigger word limit than it was being afforded, but seeing as though she was essentially a junior reporter on the staff now that she was transitioning, she didn't back talk.

There was a sound of a man clearing his throat.

Robert Amorin was standing in her doorway. Ginny looked up briefly, still scribbling down notes with her right hand. She bent back down and continued writing. She wasn't ignoring her editor, and Amorin knew that. She rather thought that he appreciated that about her—her serious work ethic.

He stood there, watching her for a minute. Ginny frowned slightly as she realised he was hovering, but still she continued to jot down notes, scribbling down key points about the new Jarvey rebellion.

Amorin finally spoke.

"We want you to interview someone."

Ginny's head perked up. That was interesting to her. She smiled briefly at Amorin before bending back down again, writing spiritedly, her ears completely open to her boss now. If they were asking her to interview, it meant that they were probably interested in moving her up from her shitty little writing position—moving her up to bigger and better things.

She really needed something like that in her life right now.

Amorin was silent for a moment, and then cleared his throat again and continued.

"We want you to interview Lucius Malfoy."

"No." The answer came out of her mouth before she could even think. She hadn't even looked up at her boss.

She could hear Amorin sit down in the chair opposite her desk.

"No?" His voice was incredulous. "You haven't heard why. I know that your two families didn't quite get along—"

Ginny looked up then, nearly sighing with exasperation. Even at thirty-eight, she still shuddered when she heard Lucius' name. He was a figure that she hadn't thought too, too much about since her adolescence, but he was a shadowy figure from her childhood regardless, a demon of sorts that she had painted as such in her mind. He had held the diary, had brandished it at her—Ginny exhaled, dropping her head into her hands as Amorin watched on. She had to cut Amorin slack, though. No one outside of close friends and family knew about the incident with the diary. And really, _really_, she hadn't thought about it _too_ much since then, since back then—

"That's putting it fucking mildly." Her words were mumbled.

Amorin started, grinding his teeth.

"Potter, come on. You can't be such a gutter-mouth at work." His voice was lightly scolding.

Ginny sighed and shook her head back and forth in her palms, her eyes closed, the silver tint of a headache just playing around the corners of her temples. Fuck. _Fuck_. "Why the hell are we interviewing _Lucius Malfoy_?" She said his name as a gardener might mention a pest, a weed, as an Auror would mention a criminal. She lifted her head from her hands and stared blearily at Amorin.

He looked back, concerned for a moment.

"Shite, Potter. You look like rubbish. Are you alright?"

"Call me Weasley."

Those three words made all known to him, and he nodded slowly, his eyes not full of pity but rather understanding. Ginny raised her eyebrows at him, tapping her pen against her teeth.

"Sorry," he said, simply. It was all she needed; he knew that. The two of them had established a well-oiled working relationship many years ago. "And we are interviewing Malfoy as a retrospective."

"Why? It's not the anniversary of any shite thing. Not the War, not his damn birthday." Ginny's voice was vitriolic.

"That's why. We want to take readers by surprise. Paint a real shocking image for them. It would boost sales like you wouldn't believe. Can't believe he agreed to it, really. But he's been so quiet in recent times, a part of me wonders if he doesn't miss the spotlight, you know? Malfoy family name doesn't hold as much clout as it used to. But also, he just worked on that book."

"Oh, god yes." Ginny groaned slightly. "That compendium of Medieval torture spells."

"The torture spells are just one chapter. Don't exaggerate."

She growled slightly. "Either way, Lucius Malfoy helped publish a book of dark magic. Essentially."

"Along with _other_ authors. And it's fucking well written. You'd love it, being the reader you are." Ginny hissed slightly, angry with herself because she knew that she _would_ be interested in it. "It would be a full length article, Pot—Weasley." He grimaced as he corrected himself. "You would have the front page. Not some tripe—a real, man-of-the-year interview." Ginny gagged a little at that, but Amorin pretended not to notice, continued. "Good god, if you did it right, it would push you into serious heights here at the Prophet. Propel you out of sports for good. You want that, yeah?"

Ginny nodded slowly. She did want that. She was sick of just being the Quidditch correspondent. Amorin had responded to her complaints by giving her smaller general articles to work on, but something of this size could make all the damn difference.

Maybe it would help her gain closure of a sort. She was a grown-up now, after all. She could handle him. And he was—what? In his sixties—for the magical community, it was nowhere near decrepitude, rather being closer to middle-aged, but an advancing age of any kind still rendered him somewhat less dangerous in Ginny's eyes.

And it was something new—something different. It could help her—she could lose herself completely in work with a story like this—it would be so detailed and so complex.

She sighed.

Amorin knew that she was softening.

"Wait," she said suddenly. "Why did you ask me? I'm technically a junior reporter here."

He grimaced again.

Ginny sensed that something was a little bit awry.

"_Amorin_." Her voice was thick with warning.

He came clean. "Malfoy requested you specifically."

Ginny stared for a few moments. "What?"

"He—you heard me, Weasley."

"What the _fuck_?"

"Stop swearing. It's not ladylike." Ginny balled up a piece of paper and threw it at her editor's head. "He said that he wanted you. You, or no article at all."

Ginny gritted her teeth. "Smarmy shit. So basically, if I don't do this—the paper loses the biggest feature they've had in years?"

Amorin nodded, grinning. "Yes."

"Oh, fuck you. Fine. _Fine_." She made a violent gesture with her hands.

Amorin grinned wider. "Thanks, Weasley. Good choice. I'll get my assistant to get the details for the first meeting to you. Don't fuck this one up."

"Don't swear," she mumbled as he left her office.

* * *

><p>She sat in the middle of the Prophet's archives, which were unfortunately located in the basement of the building. Ginny didn't mind it, though. She rather liked the dankness of the cavernous room, and she definitely appreciated the aesthetic pleasantness of the rows and rows of files and boxes and books.<p>

Hours later, Ginny Weasley picked through photos of Lucius Malfoy, wondering why she had accepted such an article in the first place. Dossiers and boxes of files and papers surrounded her, circling her in, as though she were in some sort of little nest.

"A fucking interview. A whole biography of his damn life. Goddamn you, Malfoy." Her last words were spoken at the dusty shelves. She winced at the way she sounded, even alone—insane and shrill.

She wanted to start her piece by thoroughly researching him beforehand. Never before had she had the urge to look at anything regarding Lucius Malfoy, so she figured that there were quite a few things that she didn't know about him—maybe things she didn't want to know, she wasn't sure.

Ginny had started in 1965, looking through records of Hogwarts for his enrollment.

Yes, she had found him. No pictures of the eleven-year old boy, but mention of his intelligence, mainly. Immediate sorting into Slytherin. A member of the Slug Club—Ginny couldn't help but smile at that, remembering her own time as a member of that club. She missed Slughorn—she had liked him, had appreciated that he had invited her into the club for her nasty hexes. Lucius had been invited for—she flipped through a few pages—potions.

Obviously. The most insidious and subtle subject matter at Hogwarts, aside from the Dark Arts classes.

She snorted and wrote it down on her pad.

_Friendship with Snape._

_Talented at the Dark Arts._

_Prefect._

_Potions._

Ginny sighed. None of it was news to her. She drummed on the page with her fingertips, and then reached to the next pile of papers. Here, she froze.

There was the first picture of Lucius Malfoy she had found, attached to an article about potions making.

He appeared to be about seventeen, standing beside a cauldron, dressed all in black, wearing some sort of smock, presumably to prevent the ingredients from splashing on his. His hair was pulled back at the nape of his neck—not as long as it was now, but enough to twist it into a sort of sloppy bun. Lucius' young face was cut harshly—a pointed jaw, a stark and aquiline nose, shelved cheekbones, raised eyebrows. He was staring at the camera so silently and so intensely that she didn't realise that it was a wizarding photo at first until he tilted his head to the side, drumming his fingers along the rim of the cauldron.

Ginny bent to look at the photo, meeting eyes with the young man. She exhaled a puff of breath.

He looked so young. So _young_ and so—not innocent, never innocent, but rather carefree compared to how he looked in his later life.

She slid the article into her purse.

_Narcissa._

The word was scribbled down on her pad. What had come of Narcissa? As far as she knew, they had been in love—or had at least had a mutual respect and admiration for each other. She shuffled through newer articles, using a tailored searching spell, pulling out papers until she found—

_Divorce._

She hadn't really been aware of that. That was rich. She thought that Purebloods tended to only separate—divorce being the last resort.

And then on to—

_Draco_.

Yes, their only child. The little git.

Ginny couldn't be angry with Draco. Unlike the other members of Gryffindor house and the Golden Trio, she had been quiet and observant during her dwindling time at school, and she had seen the anguish that Malfoy had gone through in his sixth year.

Now, they were civil. One time he had even winked at her when she had run into him at a Ministry function, and she had smiled back, putting her hand on his shoulder as she asked how his son was, how his wife was. Harry had glowered but hadn't spoken.

What was the use of holding onto shite from the past?

_Draco_—

—had been the apple of their eyes. Ginny remembered that, remembered how the two Malfoy parents had sprinted across the battlefield toward the end, hadn't cared about any allegiances, had ran, _ran_, their long pale hair streaming behind them, as they had searched for their son.

The sight of the three of them, huddled together, in the Great Hall after all had been said and done—it was an image that Ginny could—would—never forget—their hair streaked with dirt and blood, Lucius' nose bleeding, Draco clinging to his mother's robes like an infant, not ashamed at all, Narcissa bowed over her two men.

_Durmstrang._

Oh, yes—the fact that Lucius had wanted to send his only child to a far away school because it was stricter, more stoic—Ginny rolled her eyes.

_Tradition._

_Rules._

_Perfectionism._

Those didn't even need to be looked up in the archives. They were a given.

_Voldemort._

Ah. This one would have to be broached with him directly. Same with—

_Death Eater_.

As chilling as his past was—or was purported to be—Ginny knew that in order to get any proper story, any truth, she was going to have to go directly to Lucius and ask the pertinent questions, despite any residual fear or distrust that she would have. She didn't trust Lucius, but she trusted the Prophet from 20-30 years ago even less. She simply just didn't trust the Prophet archives on either of these terms. So much had been swilled around the press back then—anyone with money controlled the news, and nothing had been reliable. She wasn't sure how reliable Lucius Malfoy would be, but she would hazard a guess that he was going to be more truthful than the paper.

_Help._

She wrote the word down, knowing what it meant—that she was going to be in over her head, no matter how much research she did—that really only Lucius Malfoy could tell her his entire history.

_Fuck._

Oh yes.

_Fuck._

And with her life falling to shite around her, not doing much of _that_ now.

_Fuck._

God help her, she was going in over her head with this one.


	2. Chapter 2

_Weasley—_

_Malfoy has contacted me directly. Can you meet him at the Manor tomorrow at 4 o'clock?_

The note from her boss was short and sweet. Ginny liked how it was _requested_ that she meet Lucius, when she really knew that it was a command.

_Fine_.

That was her reply. She would leave it to Amorin to pass the message on to Malfoy.

_Fine_.

"Oh good god," Ginny murmured, pressing the meat of the palms of her hands into her eye sockets, trying to wring out the dull pain that was there behind the jelly of her eyeballs.

She felt like she was holding onto a constant hangover. Living alone was a different kind of draining. Ginny quite liked coming home to an empty apartment—no-one there to pester her, to ask her to make dinner, to awkwardly kiss her neck—but it was that fact that made her feel like a bad wife and mother. If she so relished her freedom, had she ever been a proper spouse and parent?

It was too much to think about.

The second note came later on that day.

_Weasley—_

_Malfoy has sent me a Portkey that I am now forwarding on to you. Apparently it will activate at ten to four tomorrow. Make sure that you are holding that damn Portkey at that time, or I'm sure that he will have my head—and yours._

Ginny stared at the wrought iron key that she held in her hands. Only Lucius Malfoy would send a Portkey in the form of an actual key.

She snorted for a moment. She had absolutely no idea if the Portkey would actually bring her to Malfoy Manor, or would deposit her elsewhere—Ginny trusted Lucius Malfoy about as far as she could throw him, and a mysterious Portkey wasn't helping his case. Unfortunately, Amorin had explained to her that there was no possible way that she could Apparate to the Manor, and that Lucius had actually closed all of the Floo points.

"Why," she had asked, "did he do that?"

Amorin had told her that it seemed as though Lucius was becoming slightly reclusive and only trusted custom-made Portkeys.

"Good grief."

Ginny held the key in her hand. It was large and ornate, in an old and gothic way, heavily made of cast-iron, blackened with age. It was truly beautiful, and frightening at the same time.

She kept it in her purse, beside the clipping of Lucius as a young man.

* * *

><p>For the twenty minutes before the activation was slated to happen, Ginny sat and thought about what she was about to do.<p>

There had been many years since she had last truly interacted with the Malfoy patriarch. In fact, there had been many years since _anyone_ had last truly interacted with the Malfoy patriarch. He had become somewhat of a hermit. And everybody had been all right with that, because it seemed an appropriate sort of tithe for Lucius Mafloy—to not be seen, not be heard. She wondered if he felt as though he was performing a sort of penance, or if he genuinely hated the public eye.

This was an interesting situation for her. Nobody was aware that Lucius and she had a past—for lack of a better term. He knew that he had been the one to slip her the notebook, and she knew that he had been the one, but the fact wasn't otherwise well known. That had been twenty-seven years ago. And she had not forgotten it, but she had forgiven it. She had learned all too quickly that holding on to too much rage—it devoured.

_There_. That was what she was most ashamed about. The Ginny Weasley of twenty years ago—of even longer ago—would have not bent like that. She would have kept her rage, simmering and perfect and violet, and would have used it like a sharpened knife, exacting and delicate. The Ginny Weasley of the past would have spat in Lucius Malfoy's face, and would have fought with nail and tooth.

The Ginny Weasley of the present merely felt tired. Excited about the somewhat convoluted opportunity presented to her, yes, but also very tired.

It was time. Ginny sighed and brought the key out of her purse. She only hoped that Lucius Malfoy wasn't too much of a fucking arsehole. She was _not_ in the mood.

* * *

><p>She had always hated the feeling of the Portkey—some frenzied, twisting travel, sucked through time and space, like going down that rabbit hole that she had read about in Muggle literature when she had been a younger girl. God only knew where she was about to be taken.<p>

* * *

><p>The gates of Malfoy Manor were formidable, but being an adult as opposed to a young girl, Ginny could appreciate the gothic beauty of the place—of the wrought iron and the house beyond. Of the history. The very bad history, but the history nonetheless—stories dappled with blood and family and wealth.<p>

She had never been here before.

Ginny had heard about it from Hermione and Ron and Harry—had heard all about their harrowing experiences here, the torture, the drawing room, and now those memories were flooding back, making her feel vaguely sick to her stomach.

They told her that she would able to go through the gates almost as though she were smoke. They told her that there were ghostly peacocks sitting coyly around the grounds. They told her that the house was beautiful, and terrifying, and was one of the last true strongholds of the Pureblood patriarchy that existed in the modern wizarding world.

The iron key was heavy in her hands, and she looked down at it, recognising it as matching the wrought iron gates that were in front of her. She felt, suddenly, tempted to try it in the gate's lock, but instead stepped forward once and then once more, and then she was slicing through the gate, blinking rapidly as she was suddenly on the other side of the iron, standing on the front walkway, lined with hedges, looking forward to the Manor.

She swallowed the scream that was incubating in the back of her throat, and started the walk up to the front door.

Ginny knew what peacock cries sounded like. She had taken her children to zoos and menageries when they were children, and they had stood, open-mouthed, at the haunting sounds.

It was completely different when she was standing on the doorstep of Malfoy Manor and the eerie two-beat caw of the birds was echoing all around her. She stood with her back to the door for a moment, looking out onto the fog-filled gardens, trying to identify where the calls were coming from. If she squinted her eyes, she thought that she could see a few blurs of white down by the fountain, but she couldn't be sure.

"Their calls are disquieting."

The voice came from behind her, deep and low and cultured, and Ginny praised her ability to keep from jumping as she stood, back to the door for another moment more, taking a deep breath, before she turned slowly. The door had been opened so carefully and so quietly that she hadn't heard it.

He stood in the doorway, arms across his chest.

"Lucius Malfoy." Ginny spoke the words and then almost winced as she realised what she had said, that she sounded inane.

He didn't mock her.

Instead, he was staring at her.

It had been years since they had last seen each other. Lucius tended to stay away from the English wizarding community. She had heard that he had been working in Scotland and Wales, and had seriously expanded his mining companies in Eastern Europe. Rumour was that he had been living in Russia, Ireland, and Romania on and off for the past ten years.

When was the last time they had seen each other?

She couldn't remember.

He looked interesting. Ginny had always liked to people-watch, and Lucius Malfoy was a person that was fascinating to the eye. His hair was longer than she remembered—almost halfway down his back, a few cords of it calling forward over his shoulder—and it was nearly all white and bright silver, no longer the golden colour it had been when he was in his forties. Perhaps that was the most physically telling thing about his age—the hair.

Yes, it had definitely been at least ten years since they had seen each other in the flesh. A Ministry function back when she was still in her twenties—yes? She remembered it—the last time she had seen him. He had been quiet, sharp looking, hawkish, dressed far more elaborately than now.

Now, he wore a simple pair of black trousers and a white button up shirt with a black waistcoat overtop.

Ginny had never been a particularly tall woman, but most of the men she worked with were closer to her height. Lucius was tall. She found herself having to look up to meet his eyes, held, as they were, over harshly slanted cheekbones.

His fingers were tapping against the door.

She wondered if he was impatient with her visual cataloguing of his person, but then she decided that she didn't care, didn't care a whit about what the elder Malfoy thought—she may have been slightly cowed by him as a child, frightened of him as an adolescent, but she was not—was_ not_—going to be ploughed over by him as an adult.

Lucius, for his part, was busy cataloguing her, even if she hadn't realised it yet.

He noticed that she had softened up slightly in her looks. But then again, he had heard that she now had three children with Potter, and he knew that would change a body so. When he had seen her so long ago, she had been hard and slender and voracious, her mouth large and grinning and almost frightening. She still had that voracious look to her eyes, but her breasts were bigger, her body smoother. But she was—what? Almost forty now. Still, she looked good. Aging slowed down in their world, but still, for all that she been through, the Weasley girl—woman?—was still as striking as she had been before—same lush mouth, same deepened eyes, same knife-sharp cheekbones.

Not beautiful. Not really. Ginny Weasley was not to be characterised as _beautiful_, but she had a look that dragged the eye to her, snapped the pupil to her mouth, her red hair.

It was too bad about her traitorous blood.

Lucius sighed.

Ginny seemed to rouse herself. She then spoke the first words to Lucius Malfoy in over ten years.

"Why did you request _me_?" Her question was very much spat out at him.

Lucius blinked. Any admiration of her mouth or her cheekbones or her hair was shattered with her venomous tone.

"Because you're the best at what you do. I don't want any of the other _idiots_ who work for the Prophet to be bumbling around my Manor, misquoting me." His voice was very, very disdainful, matching her cynical tone.

Ginny couldn't help but feel a tiny roil of pride at his words. Lucius Malfoy was an arse, and a maybe-supremacist, and quite the ponce, but he was notoriously intelligent, voracious, well read—an extreme perfectionist. The fact that he had picked her out of the line-up of her colleagues pleased her.

Ginny looked at him sharply, and then nodded once—a jagged thing of a nod.

"Are you going to let me in, or are we going to do this bloody interview on your front stoop? Charming of you, by the way, to make me knock on your front door. You could have opened a Floo to me."

Lucius moved out of his doorway, sardonically flourishing behind him. "Well, you _are_ a treat, aren't you? Please, come into my humble abode."

Ginny shoved past him.

She moved so quickly that she missed his slightly shocked look. He was surprised at her audacity. The youngest Weasley had always been a little more insane than the rest of her siblings—in a different way than the buffoonish twins or the inane dragon-hunter. She was subtly deranged, and he hadn't been expecting her to place both her long-fingered hands in the centre of his chest and push him out of his doorway—not hard enough to hurt, mind, but firm enough to get her message across.

Ginny rolled her shoulders back, taking in the beauty of the Malfoy foyer. She had been right—becoming an adult had dulled her fear of him. Lucius did nothing to her as she moved him forcibly out of the way, barreling her way into his house, taking off her cloak and slinging it over the closest banister.

He raised his eyebrows at that. Ginny pursed her lips.

There was a moment of quiet.

"_Well_?" Her voice was flat. "Are you planning to do any talking, or do you want to stand and stare at each other for the whole two hours?"

"We can do that—if you want." Lucius was leaning against the wall, his feet crossed at the ankles, his arms crossed over his chest. She wasn't sure if the comment was supposed to be some stunted form of innuendo, or just plain reticence. She resisted the urge to growl.

Instead, Ginny rolled her eyes. "I like libraries. Take me to your favourite one. We'll work there."

"What makes you assume that I have a favourite library? Or more than one, for that matter?" Lucius' voice was amused.

"I assumed that a man as well-read as you would have a good book collection." Ginny was shuffling through her bag, her voice distracted. "You obviously have more than one library. Don't be annoying."

If anyone had told her, a few years ago, that she was going to be speaking to the Malfoy patriarch in such a way, she would have laughed in his or her face.

"Good god, these next few months are going to be pleasant, I see."

"Few months?" Ginny's head came up.

"Well, you want the whole story, yes? I can only meet once a week for a few hours at most. It will probably span over a few months." Lucius expected her to rail at him, but she only thought for a moment and then shrugged.

"Fine. That's fine," Ginny said.

"No fight left in you, Weasley?"

Lucius had always been birdlike in his observation skills. He had sharp eyes. Narcissa had always said that the light grey of the irises had reminded her of lizard eyes—that, and the way that Lucius could sit still and yet also absorb everything around him. That was one of the reasons why he had risen so rapidly in the ranks of the Death Eaters. He was whip-smart and observant, and he had a photographic memory, able to catalogue lists of things and recall them on command. He now noticed two things. Firstly, Ginny didn't correct him about the use of her maiden name. Secondly, she didn't rise to his barbs.

She had an odd look on her face.

"Mr Malfoy. I've been dealing with men my entire life—my brothers, my friends, my boyfriends, my coworkers. I _thought—_" here she paused "—that I would be more intimidated by you, but I'm not. I guess I've had a lot of practice. I am nearly forty, after all. And you—you are approaching old age. So—if you please. Stop acting like my brother George circa 1995 and please show me to your library where we can start."

She didn't expect him to laugh, but he did.

"You _are_ a treat," he repeated and Ginny frowned deeply at him, her eyebrows arching down in angry shapes. His voice had changed from earlier when he had said the exact same thing. While before he had sounded derisive, now he sounded almost charmed. Truthfully, secretly, she felt as though she had just passed a test of sorts, but she didn't let any sort of relief show on her face.

"Lovely," she said stoically. "Library, please?"

"Library," he repeated, cocking his head at her. "You'll have to follow me, though."

Ginny sighed. It seemed as though every interaction with him was going to either be some sort of test or some odd show of machismo. "That's fine."

Lucius watched her for another moment and then made an abrupt movement, turning and starting to walk in long strides. Ginny wasted no time, kept up with him recklessly, felt a need to match his steps and his pace.

He shot her a sidelong glance from across his nose.

"Brave of you to come into the den of the devil, _hm_?" Lucius had such a smug voice.

Ginny clicked her teeth in frustration. "You're hardly the devil. Don't flatter yourself."

* * *

><p>When he let her into the library, she couldn't help but laugh out loud in sheer delight.<p>

"This is the second library. The first one is larger, but I prefer to stay in here," he said, not even glancing back at her as he made for what she assumed was his favourite chair—a large wingback to the right of the fireplace. The hearth was warm, containing dying embers glowing orange and deep red.

Ginny stood for a moment, staring up at the circular room, the coils of shelves lined with books. She could smell the scent of old pages, that part-dusty, part-moldering smell that ignited her senses like the smell of a fresh Quidditch field did.

She was aware that Lucius was sitting down, watching her interestedly.

"What—did you think that all Weasleys were moronic?" Her voice wasn't particularly nasty, just distracted as she walked up to the closest shelf and ran her fingers across the spines, smiling softly to herself.

"Yes," he said plainly, and Ginny turned around to glare at him. Lucius barked out a laugh, twirling a black velvet ribbon between his fingers. "Well, not the eldest one. He always struck me as somewhat logical. But the rest of you snuffling brood—yes."

He meant Bill, she realised. That was odd for him to say, and she wondered if he had just let that slip without thinking. An insight into his crazy mind. Before she could speak, Lucius laughed again, and slid the ribbon between his lips. She watched as his straight, wet teeth clamped down on the material of the tie, and then he raised his arms, pulling his hair back severely. With expert motions, he transferred the weight of the silver hair to one palm, took the ribbon out of his mouth, bound it all back with calculated hand movements.

Ginny was quiet, mentally cataloguing the scene.

He sat back, his arms down by his sides.

They looked at each other for a moment.

"Do you plan to start?"

She responded by shrugging with one shoulder, sitting heavily down on the sofa nearest to her. "I'm just trying to get my first sense of you," Ginny said.

His eyebrows went up. "Really? And what is your sense so far?"

"I'm not sure." She cocked her head at him, and he was taken aback at the flint that was in her eyes. There was no questioning that she was going to do her job well. "Physically, you look very different and then completely the same."

"How so?" His curiosity got the best of him.

She beckoned roughly with her hand. "The hair."

"What about it?"

"It's a different colour. Silver." He frowned. She continued. "But your face is almost the same as it was when I was younger. Just a few more lines. I would hesitate to call them laugh lines." She trailed off, shuffling in her bag.

She missed his odd expression.

Ginny pulled her writing pad and her pen out of her bag.

His eyebrows rose farther. "A pen?"

"Quills are ridiculously finicky," Ginny said. She clicked the plastic of the pen between her teeth, staring at him, as though she were daring him to retort.

"Interesting," Lucius said, shifting slightly forward in the chair so that his legs slung open. He looked comfortable, at ease, the top button of his shirt undone. Ginny realised that she had never seen him look so relaxed—that all throughout her childhood, in pictures in the papers, at the odd function he had always been buttoned up in harsh and well-made dress robes.

"All right. I'm starting now," Ginny said, mimicking his earlier actions and pulling the large mass of her hair back. He watched her as she twisted it around itself, tucking the ends in, creating a bun without even using a tie. The thickness of her hair allowed her to do that. A few red waves had escaped, were tucked behind her ear. She held the pen lightly between her fingers, tapped it on the paper, watched Lucius.

She could start with the basics.

"How old are you?"

"I'm sixty-five," he answered.

"Sixty-five," she repeated slowly, writing it down. Hadn't it been just yesterday when she had been fourteen and he had been so much younger, his hair so much more golden? She was lost, suddenly, in the days gone by.

"How old are _you_?"

Ginny balked at the question but forced herself to answer. "Thirty-eight."

"_Really_," he murmured, leaning forward.

Ginny scowled at him.

"Yes, really."

"I always remember you as an eleven-year old girl," he said.

"That's odd. And a bit pervy, really," Ginny answered. She preferred not to remember what she was like at age eleven. The entire year had been awful for her, and he was partially to blame. Was he dredging up the past on purpose? She had heard, once, that Lucius Malfoy never did anything by _accident_. Every single word, motion, action, gesture, sentence—it was all planned, premeditated.

"I'm surprised you haven't yelled at me yet," he said suddenly, a hint of a smile traced around the corners of his mouth.

"For what?" Her voice was mild—she was absentmindedly jotting a few notes down—but she knew what he was referring to. She wanted him to say it.

"For everything," he said, tilting his head as he watched her, the sharpness of his Adam's apple revealed in the stretch of his throat.

"No use," she retorted. "You have changed all that you can, and even now I don't know if that is anything at all. I'm not going to be able to do anything about it. Besides, I'm not scared of you anymore. You're considered elderly."

Lucius' lips pursed, twitched slightly. Ginny met his eyes.

"Sixty-five," she repeated again.

"Yes," he replied after a moment of silence.

Ginny watched him, interested. Despite his bravado, he had seemed uncomfortable saying his age to her, as though it was embarrassing for him. She looked him over pointedly. He looked appropriate for his age, as odd as that sounded. As she had noted before, his hair was the most telling feature, still long as ever—if not longer—and pure silver and white. It looked good on him, though. She could concede that. It gave him more of a light than the blond ever had. And his eyes, when seen at a closer distance, were lined, and there was a furrow between his eyebrows, and brackets around his mouth, but they didn't detract from his patrician looks in any way. Ginny was no fool—she may have hated the man at some point, but she was and always had been quite aware that he was symmetrically and glowingly attractive. At one point that had just fueled her hatred for him. Now, it made her survey him with an all the more scrutinizing eye.

And there were things that didn't betray his age at all—his posture, and his smooth hands, and the fullness of his mouth.

He shifted under her stare.

"What?" His voice was ornery.

"You have a grandson," Ginny said suddenly. She knew of Scorpius, of course, but brought him up as a conversation changer.

"Yes," Lucius said, looking more comfortable with the new direction.

"And he's—"

"Thirteen years old."

"The difficult age," Ginny murmured before she could stop herself. She bit her lip and looked up at him, but instead of mocking he was nodding, looking thoughtful.

"He's a hellion," Lucius said, still nodding. "The other day he tried to dye my peacocks red and yellow."

"Red and _yellow_?"

"He figured that the combination would upset me the most," he continued. "Although his father caught him before he could execute the plan, and yelled most convincingly at him."

"You didn't discipline him?" She couldn't help but ask the question.

Lucius looked slightly uncomfortable. "No. No—I leave that to Draco. It's true that the Malfoy generations have always been involved in each other's lives—enmeshed, really—but I don't—I can't let anything happen to Scorpius. The way that Draco was—affected—by my influence." He looked away, over her shoulder.

Ginny stared at him for a moment and then nodded once, writing again. "How is Draco?"

"My son?"

"No, the _other_ _Dracos_ we know." She shot him a withering glare.

"I didn't realise that you were on a first-name basis with him," Lucius replied, glaring back.

Ginny was silent, and stared at him until he cocked his head.

"He's quite good, actually."

"Yes?"

"Yes. He's a lawyer. I couldn't have predicted that but somehow, despite my best efforts, Draco became a well-balanced young man. He's married to Asteria."

"I know," she murmured, still writing.

"Of course you do."

"Where are Narcissa and Draco? All signs point to you staying alone, here."

His brow creased. "How do you figure that?"

Ginny pointed her pen at the mantle. "Your wedding photo has been taken down. There are still pictures of Draco but I didn't see any cloaks beside your own in the closet. These books are all yours—there is nothing here that Draco would read."

"How do you know what my son would read?" Maybe she was imagining it, but his voice seemed tighter.

"I watched him in school," she murmured as she wrote, her head bent down to the paper.

"Why?"

"I'm supposed to be asking the questions, but I'll humour you to establish a rapport," Ginny continued, still writing. "I liked him. And I felt sorry for him. And I didn't like how people treated him half the time." She looked up. "The other half of the time, I thought he got what he deserved." Ginny stood up, walking to the shelves, and Lucius watched her. "There are books on potions here, which could apply to both you and your son. Both of you have seriously misused talent in that subject. He was shite in sixth year, from what I've heard, but I think there were—other stresses during that time." She met Lucius' eyes, and saw a tension there. "There is nothing on Occlumency here, nothing on Quidditch. All of those would point towards Draco. Instead," she continued, tracing her palm over book titles, "I see books on charms, on duelling, and on arithmancy. Draco _hated_ arithmancy. I'm curious to know why you like it, though." She sat back down.

"It's objective. There is a right and a wrong." He looked at her. "That was almost impressive."

"You're not the only observant one, Mr. Malfoy."

"What makes you think I'm also observant?" His voice was slightly amused.

"You called me by my maiden name," she answered with a mild voice, and because her head was down to the paper, she missed his look. "So—where are they?"

"You're very blunt," he replied. "Surely you read about the divorce in the papers."

"I don't troll the papers for news on you," Ginny said firmly.

"Oh, I see," Lucius said, amusement clear in his voice. "But you just happened to know all of my magical strengths. You are not as good of a liar as you think you are."

Ginny resisted the urge to redden, and instead busied herself writing.

"You researched me before you came here." He stood and looked down at her.

"I'm a good journalist," she said, lifting her head, her chin to a defiant angle.

Lucius moved closer to her, standing a few feet in front of her chair. She tensed her throat muscles, squaring off her shoulders to try and contain the shudder of revulsion that threatened to rumble through her at his proximity. As fascinating as he was to watch, he still disgusted her on a very visceral level.

He squatted down, balancing on his haunches, and rested his elbows on his knees, looking at her with an expression of mock curiosity on his face.

"Why do you want to know about my wife, Ginevra?"

Her name sounded odd and foreign on his tongue, but there was something sweet about it, viscous and honey-like in the way he pronounced it, drawling out the syllables.

"I'm more interested in your son, _Lucius_," she retorted snappily, and laughed out loud at the peculiar look that flitted across his eyes. "Go back to your seat. You don't intimidate me."

He reached out and grabbed her hand, yanking her elbow out straight so sharply that it popped. She didn't flinch, and instead watched as he placed a dry kiss on the top of her hand, almost as though he were a courtier. Ginny only raised her eyebrows, sighed impatiently, yanked her hand back from his. He rose gracefully, walked back to his wingback and sat down, crossing his legs at the knee. On any other man the pose might have looked effeminate or out of place, but it only added to his odd demeanour.

"Have you gone insane in your old age?"

Lucius laughed out loud at that comment. "I appreciate that you're not scared of me."

"Not completely," Ginny said, the odd mood broken with his laugh. "I can be civil to you because of the way your wife—ex-wife—acted during the war, and because I have a feeling that Voldemort broke you in ways that the public never sees—" here Lucius' eyes flashed "—but a layer of me is still repulsed by you and what you stood for."

"Which layer?"

"Tell me about your wife," Ginny said strongly, diverting the discussion.

Lucius sighed, once, and then settled back into his chair. "She left me."

The bald admission made Ginny look up at him. "Really?"

"No, I merely said that for laughs." His tone was terse. "I could tell you it was mutual, and in some ways it was, but she was the one to leave."

"Why are you telling me this? The paper—why are you telling this paper this, I mean. Why?" Ginny was amazed that someone as private as Lucius Malfoy would be spilling his guts to the most highly publicised paper in all of the British wizarding world.

He tilted his head to the right. "Sometimes, Ms. Weasley, it is just easier to tell all. In my _old age_—as you put so succinctly—I find myself wanting to confess, as it were."

"I don't believe that for a second," Ginny said without thinking. When she met his eyes, she saw that he was smiling a little.

"That's your opinion."

"I know. Why did the two of you split up?"

Lucius shifted in his chair, and she saw a flit of discomfort in his posture. "It was just time to end the marriage."

"But divorces are so rare in our community, especially in the Pureblood sector. There had to be something more to it."

"There wasn't."

"Mr. Malfoy, you stated that you wanted to tell—"

Lucius stood abruptly. "Perhaps you can come back next week. The time had flown, and I find myself late for another engagement. The house elves can show you out. I take my leave now."

Before Ginny could blink, he had left the room.

* * *

><p>Later on, back in her one-bedroom apartment, Ginny mulled over the events of the day, fingering through her notes distractedly. As she thought, she jotted things down, ran a hand through her hair, dislodged her makeshift bun, let the tangled waves of red fall about her face as she scratched at her scalp.<p>

There was nothing of note that she could really use yet. Lucius had been open, and then closed, and that meant that next week she would have to go back in with a vengeance.


	3. Chapter 3

Ginny sat at her desk, eating a messy sandwich. Amorin sat on the other side, trying to maneuver his own way around his own sandwich. She laughed at him as a drop of sauce fell out onto his trousers.

"Shite," he mumbled, wiping uselessly at his pants with a napkin.

"Pig," she replied, laughing through a full mouth.

"How did the interview go the other day?" His eyes were curious as he took another bite.

Ginny shrugged.

"It better be more than that, Weasley. We aren't giving you a whole day off a week to just fanny about Malfoy Manor."

"Yes, that's what I'm doing. Lucius Malfoy let me _fanny_ about his family home." Ginny rolled her eyes at her editor. "He was an absolute pillock, almost a pervert, and a general bigot. He was odd and disquieting and a shite, but I started my story and I started my interview, and I can handle it."

"A shite?"

"Yes. But Lucius Malfoy has always been a shite."

"True," Amorin said, chewing. "Oh. Maybe I shouldn't say that about our exclusive interview subject. Sorry." He hardly sounded sorry.

"Ugh," Ginny exhaled. "Exclusive interview, my arse. He's incredibly self-serving and egotistical. Who sets up their own 'exclusive interview'?"

"A shite," Amorin said, laughing.

"Yes," Ginny said back, guffawing, trying to keep bits of sandwich from falling out of her mouth. "But he's odd."

"What do you mean?"

"I had almost expected to still be somewhat scared of him. But he reminded me of a big bird—he's completely caged in that Manor, by the way. I would hazard a guess that he never leaves, just sends servants out to get his shite. And he's all bird-like in his motions—snappy and tilty and kind of elegant. Completely odd."

Amorin shuddered. "I'm glad it's not me, there. I can only imagine what things he has hidden all around that house."

"I don't want to think about it," Ginny murmured.

"You're probably going to have to."

* * *

><p>She had sat at her computer for days after their first interview and not much had come of it. She had bought herself a computer a few years back, mentally thanking her father for his wild attraction to all things Muggle and electric when she realised how much faster everything was with a keyboard. Now, her fingers stroked the keys absentmindedly as she sat.<p>

There was something about Lucius that was stopping her from writing as she usually would. Granted, it was early in the interview process, but something felt different about the interview. She wasn't sure if it was her discomfort with the subject matter, or with Lucius himself, but she needed to speak with him more in order to get a proper grip on things.

* * *

><p>The next week, she had had to knock on the door, and it had taken a few minutes for someone—something—to answer.<p>

It was not Lucius. It was a house-elf. A very, very disgruntled looking house-elf who stared at her until she spoke.

"I'm here to see Lucius."

The words tasted odd in her mouth.

There was silence. Ginny resisted the urge to punt the creature that was staring at her malevolently.

"The Master is in the gazebo." The house-elf levelled Ginny with a stare, and she stared back.

"Can you please show me where the gazebo is?"

She watched as the creature nearly rolled its eyes—rolled its eyes!—and then hefted a little sigh, skittering off abruptly, moving around her into the front lawn.

Ginny blinked, and then followed the elf around to the back of the house, and then gasped.

There was something soothing about the Malfoy gardens. Ginny could concede that, no problem. Whoever had contracted and planted them had been extremely talented. There was no shying away from boldness here, no mild-mannered white roses or muted baby's breath. Instead, the entire garden that stretched before her was lush with oranges and reds and purples— étoile violette clematis and tiger lillies, Double Delight and Voodoo hybrid tea roses, Balkan peonies.

Ginny stood and stared. She had expected this to be a place of disarray, especially after the woman of the house leaving. She wondered if Lucius was the one who took such an interest in the gardens, had a feeling that there was more to the place that met the eye, maybe fields of orange poppies or blue salvia, maybe hidden fountains that lulled, maybe bowers. She smiled despite herself, loved the place. Beyond the bed of yellow roses that lay in front of her she could see the ubiquitous white peacocks, but they weren't so haunting this time around.

To her right, there was a gazebo, and that was where the house elf left her. Beyond the latticework, she could see the glow of whitened hair, and so that was where she began walking to.

As she neared, she could see that Lucius was sitting on one of his padded gazebo benches, and Ginny felt uncomfortable to see that he was cross-legged, his shoes off on the floor beside him. There was something about the pose that struck her as childish, and seeing Lucius Malfoy as childish made her feel awkward.

She refused to show that, though.

He was dressed in white linen—white linen shirt, white linen pants—and the effect was fascinating. He truly did look like some sort of odd angel. His head was turned, and he was looking out at his gardens. His hair was tied back loosely, and the wind had caught it, eddying it around his neck.

He heard her approach and turned to face her, the relaxed look lingering on his mouth and eyes for a moment more before he fully registered who she was and what she was there for.

"Hello, Mr Malfoy." Her voice was even.

"You can call me Lucius." His voice was just as even in his reply.

"Why?"

"It's my name," he replied, unfolding his long legs and planting his feet on the ground.

Ginny shrugged. "It seems a bit too familiar for my liking."

"Just do it," he said, meeting her eyes, speaking mildly, and she frowned slightly and then decided that it probably wouldn't hurt the interview proceedings to use his given name.

"Fine—_Lucius_." She made a show of pronouncing his name fully, and it felt odd on her tongue, thick and salty and male.

He smiled slightly. It was then that she noticed that he was drinking tea—he had a whole proper tea service set up, the tea pot and the scones and the petit-fours, and the sugar bowl, and the creamer, all done up in delicate purple and gold and pink china, everything laid out on a small table with a white cloth over it.

He noticed the direction of her gaze.

"Darjeeling," he said, taking a sip.

"You're very odd," she replied, and thought about how _strange_ it was that he could be so masculine and yet so feminine at the same time.

Lucius shrugged, swallowing, and offered the plate of baked goods to her.

Instead of refusing, as he had expected her to do, Ginny took a thickly iced petit-four and bit the corner off of it, chewing thoughtfully.

"They're poisoned," he said gravely, and she nodded just as gravely back at him, taking another obvious bite and swallowing.

"They're good."

"I know." He took another drag of tea and watched her over the rim of the cup.

Ginny noticed, now, the crows' feet around his eyes, the lines that could be considered laugh lines if they were on any other person. Somehow, she doubted that Lucius Malfoy had distinguished laugh lines—although she had seen him laugh more than once since starting his interview the prior week. His age was evident, and yet it was not evident—evident in the way that his skin crinkled around his eyes, and the paler colour of his hair, and the way he took a single moment to think before replying sometimes, but not evident in the broadness of his chest and shoulders, and the liveliness of his physique, and the fullness of his mouth.

"You're staring," he said, putting down the cup with a delicate sound.

"Yes," she said absentmindedly, still cataloguing his physicality. "You—what are you?" It was an odd question, and it had slipped out of her mouth before she could take it back.

He quirked his head at her, and she was amazed to discover that she could understand him perfectly without words. He was wanting to ask her for more information, but holding back, processing her question.

A covert smile was on his lips.

"Libertine."

Ginny rolled her eyes at his one-word answer. "For all your intelligence and education, 'libertine' was all that you could manage?"

"You believe I'm intelligent?"

"I know it," Ginny said, lowering her head to write on her pad. She missed Lucius picking up his teacup, smiling behind the rim.

"I'm glad that you can admit my superior intelligence."

"I didn't say _superior_," Ginny said, looking up at him and scowling.

"How was your week?"

She blinked. He was making small talk.

"Er—fine, thanks. And yours?"

"Uneventful," he said, sighing and looking out to the garden. She couldn't tell if it was a sigh of pleasure or regret.

"What do you even _do_ during your days here?"

Lucius looked at her. "What makes you assume that I spend my whole days in the Manor?"

"Call it a hunch," Ginny said, meeting his gaze.

"Hm." He exhaled. "I run and manage all my accounts. I'm an investor."

When he didn't say anything else, Ginny raised her eyebrows at him. "And? So what?"

"Well, I took my father's money and invested it into various—opportunities around the world."

"Opportunities. That sounds like code for _illegal things_."

Lucius smiled. "At one point, yes."

Ginny grunted. "Charming."

"I'll spare you the details, then. But after the second war, it was easiest, and—_suggested_ that I transfer everything to more accepted forays into the business world. So I did."

"What do you invest in, then?"

Lucius shifted, and Ginny immediately saw that he was transitioning into business-mode.

"Mines. Salt mines, emerald mines. Silver mines. Tobacco plantations. Dragon ranches. Peacock husbandry. Raven and owl aviaries. Apiaries. Beetle and ant harvesting. Eagle breeding. Dittany farms. Plots of lavender and sunflowers. Orange groves. Wheat fields. There are others, but those are some of the more interesting."

Ginny had her mouth open.

Lucius laughed. "It amazes you—doesn't it, Weasley? That someone can be so rich."

Ginny clenched her jaw so hard that she could feel her teeth compress into each other. Another day, another casual snipe at her family. Instead, she held her tongue and scribbled notes.

"How rich are you?"

"Do you want an exact number?" He looked amused.

"If you want."

"Around 900 million pounds," Lucius murmured, sipping his tea.

Ginny dropped her pen. "_What_?"

He swallowed and set his cup down. He liked her reaction to his wealth. Obviously she had known that he had been wealthy, but apparently he had never given anybody a proper number before. He watched as she bent to pick up her writing utensil, and as she scowled at him as he laughed.

"You heard me correctly, little one." And then he watched as her face contorted into an expression of disgust at his pet name. He had called her that just to see what she would do.

There was something about her that was making him want to test her boundaries. He remembered Ginny Weasley. Of course he did. She had stood up to him when she had been very young, and he had remembered that. Of all of her stupid family—inane, gormless eyes, stupid, freckled faces—she had been the only one who had appeared intelligent, fiery, somewhat all there.

But she seemed odder, now. Something was going on in her life, and while she was the one who was slated to ask questions of _him_, he was going to find out about her.

She made a sound in the back of her throat, and he smiled at her.

"Refrain from calling me that."

A sweet breeze had picked up, and the smell of nicotiana wafted towards them. Ginny inhaled lovingly, closing her eyes as she did so. She could, at least, appreciate his garden, layered rows of luscious flowers.

He watched her in her moment of vulnerability. For only a few seconds, she let her guard down as she inhaled the scent. He watched the muscles in her neck move, the way her hair eddied around her shoulders.

Then she spoke.

"Do you do this yourself?" She waved at the flora with her hand, her eyes open once more, asking the question that she had wanted to ask from the beginning.

Lucius nodded.

Ginny raised her eyebrows.

"I like to garden," he said, not quite defensively, but almost.

"Rooting around in the dirt?"

"There is something—soothing about it."

"I never liked it," Ginny replied.

"You just like the end product."

"Yes," she said, hiding a smile.

It struck her, then, how odd they looked, the two of them sitting and talking as some sort of old friends, Lucius so casual in his clothes, with his sweet china tea cup, her with her legs crossed casually, her writing pad balanced on one knee.

Lucius watched her curiously. How antagonistic their last meeting had been, but yet also how interesting—and here they were, today, sitting and talking nearly civilly. She looked good in the late light of the day, the slight breeze catching her bright hair and curling it around her chin and shoulders. His eyes tracked her movements interestedly, noting her genuine laugh lines and the deep brackets around her mouth. She had had a lot of laughter in her life, it seemed. He liked that. It was the yin to his yang, the orange burble of a chuckle to his silvered coolness.

Then he shook off the thought like a dog emerging from water, and hardened his stare once more.

She watched him.

"I'm—" He trailed off for a moment and stared up at the wooden roof of the gazebo. Ginny watched the sharp jut of his Adam's apple as he swallowed once, quiet in thought. "I'm—wanting to show you the garden."

She raised her eyebrows at him.

"Come on. Get up." When she was still sitting a second later, he looked slightly exasperated. "I'm not going to murder you and bury you under my nasturtiums," Lucius said.

Ginny pondered his statement for a moment. The both of them suddenly realised the realism of his words—that 30 years ago, it was possible that he had done that very thing. How many unmarked graves were there across this lea of land, she wondered to herself.

He looked pained, but then she stood, and the look disappeared from his face.

"Don't you dare offer me your arm," Ginny said, abruptly, at him.

"I wouldn't dream of it," he replied back, cool as silk, and just like that they were back in a familiar territory. His voice was a knife, and she was a shield.

She flicked her hair back over a shoulder, grabbed her pen and pad, and walked with him down the steps of the gazebo.

* * *

><p>"What do you think?"<p>

Lucius was walking about ten paces ahead of her, the wind catching at his hair again. He had his hands in the pockets of his trousers, his stance casual.

"I like the colours of your flowers," Ginny murmured, jotting down notes as she walked behind him, looking up occasionally to make sure that she wasn't walking into a bed of roses.

"Thank you," he said, his voice absent-minded, as he strolled along, occasionally thumbing at the velvety petal of a rose or a lily, sometimes bending to check the dampness of the soil underneath the plants with one long and extended finger. "It's taken me years to get this garden looking as it does now. It was neglected for a few years, there."

"During the Voldemort times," Ginny said.

If she had expected him to flinch at the mention of the name that had been so feared, she was disappointed. He nodded once, a terse motion, instead.

"Yes. During those years."

"When your dungeons were full—there was no time to plant peonies?"

His head moved quickly and he looked at her. There had been an edge to her voice that she had not necessarily meant to have, but she couldn't help it. Their pasts were so different, so vastly different—and here they were, walking like old friends through his bloody garden. She was angry at herself for being so civil to him, yet knew that forgiving the Malfoy family had been necessary for her development as a person, as holding onto anger like that would have been so detrimental. She was at a mental crossroads, felt that she was betraying her past by being with a person such as Lucius Malfoy, but also felt as though it was necessary for her to do what she was doing in order to move forward completely.

"I'm sorry if I sounded sharp," she muttered. "Old habits die hard."

She didn't need to say any more. He understood. He hadn't even said anything to her to prompt the apology, as he knew there was nothing he could say. They were different, the two of them. They had different pasts.

"Fair enough," he murmured, turning his head back to the flowers. "I deserved that. Many have said much worse."

"Oh?"

"The one who was the most hateful was the Lovegood man, actually." He sounded distracted but Ginny had a feeling that he was speaking in a half-minded manner on purpose, to deflect her.

"Luna's father?"

"Yes."

"You had his daughter in your _dungeons_," Ginny said, shaking her head. "His only family member. His only child. Of course he would be upset at you."

"You think I don't know that?" Lucius had turned to face her, and the light was catching his aquiline features, the wind moving his hair about his neck. He looked inhuman. "I, too, only have one child."

"Then why did you volunteer your dungeons?" They had stopped moving.

"_Volunteer_. That was not the word I would have used. And I hadn't, my own child would have died. And that is that. If there is one thing I value—above all else, above blood purity, above history, above propriety—it is _family_."

Ginny watched him and then nodded. "I can see that."

"Don't think I don't live the past every day, Ginevra." His voice had mellowed out again.

"Don't think I don't, either," she said, looking at him straight on, and she knew that in that instant he remembered that one of her brothers had died at the hands of his colleagues because an odd, unfiltered look passed over his face.

"I suppose we all do. The nightmares Draco used to have—" He stopped abruptly, unsure of why he had started discussing his son, unsure if Draco would have approved of him revealing such intimate details.

"I know," Ginny said. "He mentioned them to me, once."

He looked surprised.

"We outgrew the 'mortal enemies' stage fairly quickly once Voldemort was removed from the equation. And I was never the one that Draco hated the most." She smiled to herself. "Definitely not."

Lucius frowned. There was something odd about the way she was smiling.

"I'd go as far as to say that we're _friends_, now. He still hates Harry, though."

"Who doesn't?"

Ginny frowned at him. "You sound like a teenaged boy."

"Did you date him?" Lucius looked at her from a sideways glance.

She laughed out loud. "No, I never dated Draco. But our sons are friendly, now, and so we have grown up. I like him more than Asteria, though. I think she regards me with suspicion."

"I don't doubt it," Lucius murmured, idly fingering a tulip. He was mildly fond of his daughter-in-law, but she often had jealousy problems, and Ginevra was by no means an average looking woman. And with the way she had just covertly smiled while talking about his son—he was surprised that Draco had never pursued her.

"You don't like Asteria?"

"She is fine. She is polite, and duty-bound, and she serves her purpose," he replied.

"That's so clinical."

"Sometimes, clinical is needed. To strengthen and breed proper families."

Ginny's brown furrowed. "But we're talking about people, not brood mares," she said.

"Are we?"

"What about love?"

Lucius laughed a little, turning to look at her.

"What's funny?"

"We don't marry for love," he said, a small smile on his mouth. "It's a quaint notion, but it doesn't occur in our society. I suppose there are couples who have either grown to love each other, or have loved each other by chance even before the engagement was arranged, but it's—rare."

"Did you love Narcissa?" She tilted her chin up to look at him.

He was silent for a few long moments, and Ginny wondered if he had tuned out. Then—

"In a way. I loved Narcissa in a way."

"What does that tripe mean?" She had had enough of his roundabout questioning and answering and so she decided to go right for the jugular. "Just give me a straight answer."

"I loved parts of her," he said, looking away from Ginny and off into the orange distance of his gardens. "I loved her ferocity, and her dedication to me and the family. I loved how much she loved—_loves_—Draco and how much he loves her. Narcissa was wilder than people made her out to be, but so very balanced at the same time. When she knew that she was to be married to me—me, the beastly Malfoy, the one who was Voldemort's right hand man, the cruel one—she did not balk. God, the way she looked on our wedding day. So calm. So stoic. She was always bound by duty, and always did her best to uphold it." He paused, drew in half of a breath and turned back to Ginny. "And it was her quick thinking that helped to warm our image in the eyes of the Ministry. Her—with Potter."

She looked odd, he noticed. There was an indeterminable look on her face.

"That sounds lovelier than you made it out to be," Ginny said.

He sighed. "She left me, you know. That doesn't happen. In our society—it just does not happen."

"Divorce?" She sounded incredulous. "But it's so commonplace—"

"Not in the Pureblood society," he snapped at her. "I have become—I have become a laughingstock. Years ago I struck fear in the hearts of the vapid women and inane men of our society. I could stride into a room and people would stop and _stare_ at me. They would shut up and listen to me. And now I am _nothing_." He stopped, breathing heavier.

"Why do you care so much about what others thing of you?" Her question was not malicious or aggressive. She was genuinely curious.

"I just—I do. Appearances are—if you haven't been reared in this society, you will not understand, Ginevra." He turned fully from her and began to walk away.

"What? Are we done with that subject?" She scowled at his back and huffed to herself.

"Yes," he called back, his voice on the wind.

"Oh, for fuck's sake," she grumbled, staring at the mud on her boots. "Wait for me."

"Hurry up," he said, still facing away from her, but slowing his pace incrementally so that she could somewhat catch up to him. Still, he was farther away from her than she wanted.

"Wait," she said, struggling to keep up with him, the heels of her boots getting caught in the muck, and so she reached out a hand, not thinking, to steady herself on his back.

As soon as her hand touched him, he whirled away from her, and she pitched forward, landing hard on one knee, feeling the wetness of the earth below immediately soaking through her one trouser leg.

"What the _hell_ was that for?" She stared up at him, gritting her teeth.

He didn't answer her, and there was an odd look in his eyes.

"Don't touch me," he said.

"It's not like I deliberately set out to _touch you_, you stupid, stupid man," she snapped at him. "I lost my balance."

"Inelegant," he murmured, turning away from her.

She hauled herself up and lunged towards him before she could reconsider, landing her palms on his back. He turned away as quickly as humanly possible, grabbing her wrists in a very strong grip, and shaking her once, not hard, but enough.

"I mean what I _said_," he hissed. "_Don't touch me_."

Ginny met his eyes defiantly for as long as she could, but finally she wrenched herself free from his grasp, shoving him away from her. He didn't react to her touch on his chest, which she found odd.

"I'm going. _Now_," she said, stepping away from him. "Don't you follow me. I'll walk myself to your gate."

He made a move as if to come after her—not aggressively, but somewhat contritely—but Ginny darted back so quickly that he remembered that she had played Quidditch professionally for years, that she was more agile than he gave her credit for, and then, as he was digesting that thought, she was nothing more than a bright red blur across his gardens.

* * *

><p>When the letter came from him, switching the day for their next meeting, he mentioned nothing of the incident in his garden, offered no apology. The letter was direct, and to the point, and professional as usual.<p>

She did not find that odd. She had not really been expecting it, but she had mulled over the scenario over and over in her head. Something about her hand—her touch—on him had set him off completely.

She filed the fact away in her head. She kept it there, and turned it over in her mind, looking at it from all angles. Lucius Malfoy was _human_. He had shown a shred of scary, odd humanity, and that was not something she would forget.


	4. Chapter 4

The third time they met, she had been shown—grudgingly—into his study by the ever-reticent house-elf.

"Where is Lucius?"

"The _Master_ is busy at the moment. You will wait here. You will not touch anything."

She sighed and rolled her eyes, and then berated herself for engaging on such a base level. The elf gave her a baleful glare and then disappeared.

It was eerie to be in his study by herself. It seemed to be a place in which she always needed supervision. Maybe because it was so inherently Lucius—very male, very pointed and angled, hard corners of wood and stone and glass. It was a man's room, it was true, and somewhere inside of herself, the piece of femaleness that she had shoved down into her bottomless soul curled up in discomfort. Everything about the room assaulted her senses in a synaesthetic way—the smell of firewood and ashes hanging dusky and sweet in the quiet air, the overwhelming visual of the books all side by side in his bookcases, the feel of the worn leather under her palm, the glass panes of the windows under her palm, the desk surface under her palm.

_Hurry up, Lucius_, she thought. If there was one thing she truly despised, it was lateness. It was unlike him to be tardy for a meeting of theirs. Not that they had had a long time together, but even though he was odd and like to keep her guessing with his strange little power plays, she had never known him to be late. He was punctual and professional.

She was a bit unsettled by it.

She looked down at the desk surface. She was not prying, as there was nothing there to be worthy of looking at. Ginny had never really been one for prying. Living with so many brothers had taught her that if she had gone looking, if she had eavesdropped, she was going to see something or hear something that she didn't want to experience. The amount of times she had walked in on her brothers shagging had scarred her from being nosy. But the desk was beautiful—rich and dark, the kind of desk she wished that she could afford. A writer needed a good, solid desk. Lucius wasn't even a writer and he had the best one.

She sighed, ran her hands across the polished wood.

One of his desk drawers was ajar, which she found odd. Her automatic response—as a mother? as someone who cleaned up after others?—was to nudge it closed with her thigh, and as she did so, there was a sound of glass rolling around.

_Glass?_

_Shite_. She opened the drawer quickly to make sure that she had not broken anything. That was her worst nightmare—to defile Lucius Malfoy's grand study desk.

Nothing was broken. In fact, the drawer held nothing but a glass vial with an orange liquid in it.

Ginny shut the drawer again, with a softer motion than before.

She had never been at the top of the class in potions, but Ginny had appreciated Snape in a way that none of her other classmates had. She had recognized in him a touch of the darkness that she, too, had possessed after the incident with the Chamber of Secrets. He had never been quite _as_ hard on her as he had been on her fellow classmates. Maybe he recognized something kindred in her as well. Because of that, she had worked extra hard in his class, managing to boost herself to somewhere near the top half of the grading curve. Potions was not a subject that came naturally to her—she was far too impatient to wait for all of the subtle motions and nuances of the cauldron and the brewing process.

There was nothing in her mind regarding orange potions. Ginny made a mental note to look up the colour orange when she got home.

When Lucius finally entered the room, she was sitting on the sofa reading a book that she had taken clear off of his desk.

"I had my page marked in that," he said, striding past her and taking the book from her in one swift motion.

"You were late," she replied, not rising to his challenge but instead sitting back against the couch.

"Private Floo-call," he said, his face slightly flushed.

"Floo sex?" She grinned at him, at the ridiculous nature of her question. He frowned.

"It's none of your business," he replied, voice clipped.

'Floo sex," she repeated, laughing, already drawing out her writing implements. She stopped, suddenly, mid-motion. He was putting the book back on his desk, meticulously searching out the page he had been on, sliding a bookmark in. When he looked up at her, he raised his eyebrows.

"What?"

"I just realised that I've laughed more around you in the past few weeks than I have around anybody else."

"How sad for you," he said, sitting down, opening one of his drawers and pulling out a ledger.

"I know," she said, her voice soft. She watched as he marked something down and then put the book back in its respective place. He looked up again.

"Well?"

"Can we start now?" She gestured at him with her pen.

"Yes."

"Tell me about your time at Hogwarts."

Lucius surprised her by laughing, tilting his head back. "God, that was a long time ago."

Ginny widened her eyes at him, tapped her pen against her teeth.

"Why do you want to know about _that_?"

"I cover all angles," she said, gesturing at him with the pen. "And I want to know how much of a bully you were at age seventeen."

"Hm." He made the sound in the back of his throat, pausing a moment before speaking again. "It's an awkward age span, Hogwarts," he said, settling into the chair more comfortably. "Eleven to seventeen. I believe the Muggles begin their idea of adulthood when the youth enters the 'teenaged' years, yes?"

Ginny nodded, surprised that he was versed at _all_ in anything Muggle.

"Eleven is too young to go away to school. It's ridiculous. I was not ready for Draco to leave the household at that age—at all. Narcissa, on the other hand, was more than ready to foist him out the door onto others. He was a hellion at that age," he said, laughing to himself.

"What? I thought it was Narcissa who wanted Draco to stay close to her. I thought that you wanted Durmstrang, which is considerably farther away."

"Well, I did. I knew that either way, Draco was going to have to leave home at a tender age. Durmstrang would have been harder, I suppose, because of how far it was. But it was—"

"A Pureblood institution?" Ginny's voice had a touch of snarl in it. Lucius turned bland eyes onto her, staring her down.

"I suppose. But it was also a safe house, Ginevra."

"For _Draco_?" Ginny was somewhat surprised at that. "You realise that your son was the biggest bully in all of Hogwarts for at least five years of his years there."

Lucius closed his eyes for a moment.

"That may have been," he said, "but it wasn't always easy for him. You yourself said that." Here he looked at her. Ginny didn't reply. "Did your husband ever tell you about the time he met up with my son in the girls' bathroom at Hogwarts?"

Ginny's eyebrows shot up. "_What_?"

"Nothing _tawdry_," Lucius replied, rolling his eyes.

"What happened?" She didn't like having the uneven footing in this conversation. Throughout their marriage, Harry had had his secrets. That was what happened when you married a troubled man—the kind of man that she had always been attracted to. Troubled men had their secrets, and she had never particularly prodded Harry for his—for she had had her own. Still, now, facing down Lucius, she wished that she had a little more information about the incident he was referring to.

His face tightened up.

Reliving the incident was not something that he liked to do. To be called to Hogwarts in the middle of the night, to see his son swaddled in gauze, the white all red despite the wounds having been knit together by Severus Snape's thankfully fast counter-spell, seeing his son so drained of everything, so white, lying in that damn hospital bed because of Harry _Fucking_ Potter—it had been one of the worst memories of his life.

"What?" Her voice was softer now, and as he looked at her, he noticed that she looked rather scared. "What did Harry _do_?"

"In sixth year, he came across my son, who was—who was _crying_ in the girls' bathroom. I don't know how they met up in there, but words were exchanged—I'm sure Draco was cruel as ever, so don't try and defend Potter by using that excuse." He had raised a palm to her. "But they started to duel, and Potter used a curse on Draco." Ginny stared at him. "It was a curse that he had read in a book somewhere. He didn't even know the curse when he used it. He _ignorantly_ took an unknown spell and used it on my _son_." He took a breath. "Do you know how your brother's ear was cut off?"

"Yes. That spell was nasty. We couldn't re-attach—" She broke off. "What the _fuck_ does that have to do with what you were just telling me?"

"You already know," he tossed out to her, flicking his head slightly. "You've already made the connection in your mind." She had turned pale. "Harry used that same curse on Draco, except it wasn't a misfire, and it wasn't just limited to his ear. My son—" his voice was low and full of anger "—has scars all across his body from your husband's idiocy. And I wasn't there to protect him. And I couldn't do anything about it."

"Christ," she breathed. "Harry never told me that."

"The whole bloody school hushed it up damn quick," he snarled. "Potter got a reprimand. Draco got scarring across his chest so tight that it _hurts_ him on some days. It makes me sick. That would not have happened at Durmstrang."

"You don't know that," she said.

"I do," he snapped. "At least amongst his—his kind, he might have been more accepted. Draco was bullied more than you will ever know. He never talked about. He held it all inside. I'm amazed that he is a functional wizard in his day-to-day life, because the ways he could have been damaged—" Lucius broke off, inhaling. "Best not to think about that, I suppose."

Ginny was quiet, watching him. She had never before seen Lucius Malfoy in such a human light. She had never before realised the depth of his love for his son.

He was uncomfortable under her gaze, and so he spoke again.

"Maybe your family doesn't understand," he stated cruelly. "Having so many children and all—if one went missing, they might be unnoticed."

Ginny blinked, and then tilted her head to one side. "It's like my mum used to say when we would ask her which child she loved the best. If you have ten fingers, and you cut two of them off, each wound is going to hurt equally."

Lucius was the one to blink.

"I suppose so," he said, immediately ashamed of his vitriolic outburst. She had responded with such coolness, such maturity, and it had made him feel inane. "I apologise," he murmured, flicking at his fingernails.

"That's fine," she said, her head still tilted.

He frowned. He didn't like that she was so even-handed sometimes, because it made him feel like the naughty child, gave her the edge over him.

She had stopped staring at him and was writing again.

He hefted a sigh.

"What?" She spoke without lifting her head.

"What _what_?"

"I'm a mother, Lucius. I can tell when someone is in a snit without even looking," she replied, and still her head was down.

"I'm not in a _snit_," he retorted.

She looked up at him.

He frowned. There was something so placid about her face, and it made him feel even more ungainly and out of line than he had felt before.

"You're not as feisty as you once were," he murmured.

Those words _did_ have an affect on her, he noticed. Her shoulders twitched in a way that told him that she had consciously made sure they didn't hunch up around her neck—a universal item of body language that conveyed discomfort. A cringe.

"I suppose," she answered, her voice deceptively light.

"Why?"

He had asked the question very earnestly. There had actually been no spite in his mouth when he had said it to her. He very much wanted to know what was going on in her life—maybe somewhat self-servingly, but still honestly.

She frowned.

"I haven't noticed."

"Yes, you have," he answered.

"I am older, you know. I'm not the young woman I was," she started.

Lucius scoffed. "That's an excuse."

She was staring at him. It was clear that she was not going to speak. She looked extremely taken aback. Perhaps she had not been expecting him to delve into her personal life.

But she had been wrong. He made it a goal to _know_ every person that was near him. He had done it in his youth, and he did it now. Granted, he had not had many people _near_ him since he had retired to the Manor. Visitors were scarce. Nobody particularly wanted to associate with the snaky, fallen former right-hand man. And so she—_she_—coming into his life like this—well, he had asked for her, after all. He had chosen her because she had seemed so snappy, so crude in her younger days. He had wanted some entertainment.

And she still had a whisper of that in her—the way she had shoved past him on the first day, the way she rarely let him get away with being cruel and rude, but she seemed _tired_.

She was opening and closing her mouth like a goldfish.

He raised his eyebrows at her. Never had he seen Ginevra Weasley struck so silent.

She shut her mouth, and inhaled, and then finally spoke.

"Yes, I suppose it is."

He blinked. He had not really expected her to acquiesce.

* * *

><p>A few weeks later, Ginny was surprised to find herself thinking about him on a normal week-night—not one of the days they had met on. A day where she had not seen him at all.<p>

That was disquieting. She was both repulsed by herself and—at the same time—interested in why her mind had strayed to him. It had been about a month since they started meeting. Once a week, he was an important fixture in her life. Perhaps not important, but at least an indomitable one.

It was funny. Their meetings were not incredibly long—an hour or so, a few hours at most—but they were very draining. She wasn't sure if it was because she constantly and consciously suppressed her younger self around him—that eleven year old who had been scared by the Lucius Malfoy of the past—or because he was merely such a huge personality. The things he said

The last time they had met, she had been caught staring at him.

It was odd. She never felt shame when she was caught looking at him. This time had been no different. He had been sitting, talking to her, and she had slowly forgotten about her notes, and had instead just stared at him.

He had finally noticed, and had frowned very slightly, had asked her _can I help you?_ and had maybe expected her to blush, to be embarrassed. No, she had not. Ginny had only slowly tilted her head from side to side, and then had smiled, had answered _no_.

She had been looking at his features. So like his son, and yet different. The Malfoys were so visually similar that it was very disquieting to see them side-by-side—and when Narcissa had been thrown into the mix, it was almost blinding. Ginny wanted Draco to come visit just so she could see the two Malfoy men next to each other. From what she remembered, Draco was probably as tall as his father now, but there was a broadness to Lucius that she did not remember in Draco's body. Draco was nervous and mouthy and quick, his muscles lithe, his limbs always in motion. Lucius was weighty and meaningful, moved with languid intent, a subdued grace that she could tell was imbued right into the marrow of him.

And now she was thinking of him.

"_Hm_." She grunted out loud to her empty bedroom, and saved that fact away.

* * *

><p>The next time they met, Ginny was earlier than she had expected to be.<p>

Lucius had stopped giving her Portkeys, and now let her Apparate directly into the front hall. She was surprised that he had allowed that.

His taciturn house-elf appeared.

"Er—hello," she offered.

No such luck.

"Master is finishing up his daily swim. You are _early_." The elf's voice dropped vindictively.

"Well, better early than late," Ginny said briskly, refusing to engage in an argument with a Malfoy house elf. "Take me to the swimming pool."

"What if Master does not want to see you?"

"We have a pre-arranged meeting, obviously," Ginny said, her voice becoming firmer. "Take me to Lucius. Now."

She never thought she would have seen the day where she was arguing with an elf. Hermione would have smacked her upside the head and handed her a S.P.E.W. button. Ginny sighed to herself. She would have to try and be more polite with his house elves. Her mum had always taught her that it was possible to get more flies with honey than vinegar.

The elf frowned at her but reluctantly took her pant-leg and Apparated them to the _indoor swimming pool_.

"Jesus," Ginny breathed, as the elf left. _Indoor_. She hadn't been expecting that. It was a whole specific realm of wealth that merited an indoor pool. Although she had grown beyond being effortlessly impressed by the Malfoy fortune, there were moments—such as this one—where she felt small and pale and eleven years old again.

The muted sound of a hand whisking through water brought Ginny back to awareness. Looking at the pool, she realised that Lucius was swimming. She had known that all along—the elf had told her—but she hadn't been visually aware.

He was underwater. She smiled a little at the sight of it, because he looked as mermen were supposed to look, idealized—beautiful and streamlined and completely fluid, his long white hair caught behind him, moving subtly with the movements of the water as he sliced his way from the far end of the pool to the near end. He seemed to be going for as long as he could underneath he water, trying to hold his breath for as long as possible.

Her eyes travelled the length of his body—white flesh to white flesh. No interruptions.

_No interruptions_.

He was naked.

The thought registered in her brain, and she kept herself from gaping at the idea of it. She was in a room—willingly—with a naked and wet Lucius Malfoy. Ginny willed herself to look away from the water, and instead stared up at the stained glass windows.

_Were those the stations of the cross_—

He broke the water. She heard it, and her eyes were drawn back down to the water without her even meaning to.

He was naked and he was breaching the surface of the water at the end of pool closest to her, streaming lines down his face and his creamy sheet of white hair, his mouth open but his eyes closed as he emerged.

Then he opened his eyes and while he did not jump at the sight of her, he seemed taken aback that she was standing there, looking down at him.

"You're early."

"You're naked."

Oh. She hadn't meant to say that.

Ginny resisted the urge to bite her lip.

He was surprised to see her there, and yet also—a small print of him thrilled at the idea of standing just a few feet away from her, naked as the day he was born. His nudity did not make him feel uncomfortable. If anything, it made him feel more powerful. She was obviously taken aback by his state of undress. He wondered if something about his masculinity made _her_ feel uncomfortable—Potter had been a sorry excuse for a man, anyhow.

"Yes, well—considering it's my private indoor pool, I do tend to swim naked." He was leaning slightly against the tiled edge of the pool, pressing his body against the underwater wall. "And considering I'm about to get out and get my towel, you have a choice. You can avert your eyes or you can watch." With that, he pushed up on the edge of the wall with strong forearms, and Ginny turned her head quickly away in order to avoid getting an eyeful. All she saw was the beginning of pale flesh.

She stared at the wall as she heard him walk over to one of chairs, heard the soft sound of fabric, and she assumed that he had at least grabbed a towel.

Ginny had always been an impatient type. Sometimes it worked for her, and other times it did not. Turning so quickly meant that she could urge Lucius to get dressed faster and perhaps bump up the time of their meeting, but it also meant that she saw Lucius Malfoy in only a white towel.

_Oh_.

Lucius had one towel around his waist, and was using another to dry off his hair, wringing the long tips of excess moisture.

"So impatient," he reiterated, but the words lacked his usual malice. He had no intention of frightening her off, not now. There was something odd about the way that the two of them were standing near each other, one dressed and one nearly naked. It took away façades.

And so to avoid looking at his curious, unreadable grey eyes, she instead examined his body.

His chest was broad and lightly-haired, the definition of muscle there underneath the pale of his skin, and she was grudgingly impressed with the state of his body, even in his sixties. He moved with a leonine grace—more leonine than serpentine, which also surprised her. His body language was subtle and yet so _present_, so powerful. Even the slight shift of his shoulders, as he stood under her view, conveyed physicality and force. There was a language to those shoulders, to that ribcage, and Ginny wished, irrationally, that she could include a picture of him at the present moment in the article—how his body would express the things she could not.

What startled her most, however, was how chewed-up he was—Ginny was amazed at the sheer amount of scar tissue that he had across the front of his body. There, above the right nipple—a vicious looking half-moon scar. There, circling around the left hip—a jagged mouth of a mark, silvery and tight. Across his stomach—lines that could have been caused by anything sharp and delicate. Around the tattoo on his left arm—that tattoo that she had seen so often that she was not scared of it anymore, simply could not be—there looked to be knife scars, pink and raised, and she wondered if they had been self-inflicted and if they were newer than the faded ones. And lapping over his shoulders, curling towards her—the worst of it, thin slices that could have only been caused by a bullwhip.

He was looking at her with an unknowable look on his face—she did not feel like there was anything sexual in his gaze, but that he was watching her watching him, wondering what her reaction would be. If she had been a more observant person, someone better at reading other people, she might have been able to tell that he was mildly distressed by her appraisal, that he was having a moment of slight insecurity, but as it was she did not feel that,

She met his eyes boldly, and there was a moment of awkwardness where Ginny wondered what she should feel—would he be offended if she showed pity in her eyes, or would he be receptive?

Her thoughts were interrupted because he turned away from her, in the process of pulling the towel tighter around his body, and his back was exposed to her.

If the front had been bad, the back was so, so much worse. The criss-cross of ancient unhealed welts and silvered scar tissue was breathtaking, and Ginny felt her stomach drop down into the soles of her feet. His back was a latticework of old torture and layers of memories of pain and punishment.

There was simply no skin visible beneath the scarring.

That was why, she thought, he hadn't wanted her to touch his back.

And the language of his body in that moment was almost heartbreaking to her. She never would have thought that Lucius Malfoy could portray insecurity, but his shoulders did an odd bunching motion, and she noticed how tightly his fingers were gripping his towel at his hips, fingertips turned white, and nearly shaking.

She was galvanized.

Ginny reacted as a woman—as her mother? as _a_ mother?—might have. She reacted as a flesh and blood human might have. She reacted as only she could in a situation as disquieting and silent as that. She stepped forward into his personal space and placed a full, hot palm in the centre of his broad back.

Lucius stopped moving immediately, still in place, his hands still holding the towel around his waist. Ginny could feel the muscles under the welted skin of his back tighten, and his body reacted accordingly, the shoulders moving just so incrementally, the buttocks and thighs stiffening so subtly. It looked as though he was awaiting a judgment.

She did not speak. She moved her hand curiously across his skin, feeling it ripple under her fingers, and she thought about the years of suffering that had caused what she was touching. She was so close to him that she knew that he could feel her breath across his shoulder blades, but her intrigue was drawing her so near, so near that she could see the puckered, silvered edges of each specific whip mark. How they must have bled—Ginny wondered if they had been all at once, and suddenly she got an image of Lucius, his hands bound behind him, naked and prostrate on a cold stone floor, his mouth open and screaming but hoarsely silent, some blood-coated whip flung midair—

She realised that his body had relaxed again, and when she looked up, shaken from her thoughts, she saw that he had turned his head so that his face was in perfect side profile to her, and his eyes were trained on her from across his shoulder.

Something inside of her told her to savour this moment, that another moment of insecurity and closeness as this one would not happen with him any time soon. So she moved her hand across his back again, watching in fascination as goosebumps involuntarily raised on his pale, pale skin—in between the furrows of the scar tissue—in the wake of her own warm flesh touching him. He was so broad. She felt as though she could trace her hand forever and still not reach the end of his muscle and flesh. She had not realised how big he actually was. Somehow the well-made shirts and trousers disguised it.

Her head dropped closer to his skin, as though she were in a sort of trance, and she had the odd urge to drag the tender skin of her lips across the Braille of his back. There was something about the wet warmth of the room, the smell of the water, that was lulling her into thinking this was a good idea, this closeness, this almost tenderness. She noticed that his body had relaxed completely, the muscles under her hand softened. She could smell the salt of his skin, and so leaned forward and brushed her lips across it, feeling the roughness of old scars underneath.

Lucius' spine locked and straightened and Ginny realised, immediately, what she had done. Instead of being embarrassed, which she refused to feel, she felt stubborn. Even as she girded herself to be berated, she noticed a light pink flush across his back.

Ginny did not drop her hand right away. She dug her fingertips into his skin slightly, watching as the muscles moved under her palm, and then she slowly disengaged herself from him, taking two steps back.

Lucius did not turn around to talk to her. Instead, he briskly finished drying off and pulled on a robe that she had not seen hanging off of the backs of one of the pool chairs. He did all of this while facing away from her.

Ginny contemplated her actions. She knew that on a level she was supposed to be revolted by the fact that she had just willingly touched Lucius Malfoy, but a warmer piece inside of her was accepting that same fact. It was human _touch_. It was _human_ to want to comfort someone. After all of those years, Ginny had relinquished her hatred of Lucius. It had been too tiring to spend her time being angry.

He had turned to face her.

Ginny snapped back to attention, her hands in her trouser pockets, her hips slung at an insouciant angle. She met his eyes evenly.

He seemed thoughtful. Then Lucius gave a great exhale, and shook his head slightly, and his hand rose up as if he were contemplating touching her. She did not move. His hand dropped back down to his side, and he finally spoke.

"If you want to move to the first library, I will meet you in there in a few minutes."

She wasn't sure what she had been expecting, but that hadn't been it. So Ginny smiled crookedly and nodded.

* * *

><p>When he came into the library ten minutes later, his hair was still damp, tied back from his face. He was wearing dark slacks and a blue cotton shirt with the sleeves unbuttoned and rolled up to his elbows. She could see his Dark Mark quite prominently, but for some reason was not bothered. She knew that he did nothing without thinking, first, and therefore thought that he must have displayed the tattoo on purpose, to try and regain some sort of control over their situation.<p>

She was leaning against his desk, her finger holding her place in one of his books.

Lucius walked over to her, standing closer to her than she had anticipated, and pushed the book up in order to read the cover.

"_Slavic Sex Magick_?"

"Yes," she replied calmly, refusing to feel embarrassed. He shrugged and turned from her, and she wondered if it was to conceal a smile.

Lucius settled into the divan, and Ginny realised that was getting ready to speak, and so she put the book down on his desk and picked up her writing implements, sitting down on the sofa opposite him.

They sat for a moment and watched each other. Neither spoke.

Finally, Ginny opened her mouth.

"I'm sorry if I invaded your personal space." She did not need to specify what she was talking about. They could both recall the feel of her hot breath on the water-cooled skin of his leathered back.

He regarded her for a moment, and then sighed, his body losing its rigid, frosty stance and becoming more human.

"That's fine. I was more surprised at you."

"Why?"

"Because I wasn't sure why you would willingly touch me." His statement had him looking away from her, his jaw tight, and Ginny wondered if she was seeing another inner slice of Lucius Malfoy—that perhaps he considered himself a bit of a physical monster.

He didn't want to appear as he did in front of her. The mess across his body—his back, specifically—was something that he tried as hard as he could to disguise. Women had been taken in the dark, their wrists pinned to the pillows by his large hands. He did not dress in front of people. Narcissa had known, and he had let her kneel on the bed behind his seated figure and rub dittany across his back. She would always tie her hair back to prevent it from sticking to his skin. She would hum to herself as she spread her palms across him, and it was those times that he felt closest to her. Now, he did not want to appear fraught or weak in front of the female Weasley, but something in him was welling outwards towards her, words coming out of his mouth.

"Rubbish," Ginny said scornfully. "Call it a bit of the Molly in me."

He smiled at that, despite himself. "Molly. The only woman I've ever been truly scared of."

"More than Bellatrix?"

"More than Bellatrix," he affirmed.

"Good for mum," Ginny murmured, twiddling her pen in her fingers. She changed the topic easily, smoothly, directing it away from the dangerous ground it had just been on. "What of Bellatrix, anyway?"

Lucius cocked his head at her. "How do you mean?"

"What was your relationship like with her?"

There was a slow moment when Ginny observed him understanding the question, and then a deep bit of a smirk appeared on his lips.

Ginny blinked. "You didn't."

"Why not?" His voice was low and laughing.

"Before or after you married Narcissa?"

"Before," he said. "Naturally. I was considering marrying Bellatrix for a while, anyway. I needed to test the goods."

Ginny looked at him, disbelieving.

He continued. "Good thing I did. She was simply too insane to hold up the Malfoy name. So I changed my wedding contract to accommodate Narcissa. Andromeda, of course, was already taken by that time."

"She was older than Narcissa?"

"Narcissa was the youngest. Bellatrix was the eldest."

"Did you fuck Andromeda?" Ginny's voice was disbelieving.

"Andromeda was the first of the three that I _fucked_," Lucius replied, mimicking her voice by raising his own voice on the expletive. He chuckled at her face. "We were the same age, Ginevra. And we travelled in the same social circles. It happened when we were sixteen. We were both in the same house, after all." Ginny was writing, thinking. "I took _Andromeda_ from behind in the boy's dormitories in the Slytherin dungeons." His voice dropped to an odd pitch, and Ginny found herself picturing his conquests. "_Narcissa_ I deflowered on our wedding night, and she bled so much that the wedding sheets were nearly all red, which the rest of our families loved when she hung them the next morning. And _Bella_—Bella I fucked in the arse when we were seventeen, in my parent's bathtub over the winter holidays."

Ginny blinked at him.

"Bellatrix was the best because she was so feral. But she was frightening and untamable. I could have never married a woman like that. Andromeda was the most submissive, which I had not expected. And Narcissa—she was the bossiest. I liked that," he said, laughing. "They were great beauties, the women of the house of Black," and his voice turned introspective.

"So you _were_ a bit of a libertine," Ginny said, her voice a bit more snippy than she had intended.

"More than a bit," he supplied.

"How old were you when you lost your virginity?"

If anyone had told her, years ago, that she would one day have been asking this question of Lucius Malfoy, Ginny would have laughed at them.

"Fourteen," he answered calmly. Lucius was watching her evenly. "To my cousin."

"_Cousin_?"

"Second cousin."

She couldn't help it. She dropped her face into the palms of her hands. When she looked up, he was observing her. "You are vile."

"She was seventeen. And very helpful."

"Stop! I don't want to hear anymore about incest."

"It's a common thing in the Pureblood families, especially the older ones."

"It's not in mine!"

"I forgot that you were Pureblood," Lucius mentioned casually, and Ginny scowled at him. Funny that she should have never cared about her blood status until he began making disparaging comments about it.

"Charming" she snarled.

"Incest was always common. It's like the Muggle royalty. Everyone wants to save the blood status, so they have to marry within the families. I'm surprised there aren't more visible birth defects—of course, every one of the ancient Pureblood families has some son or daughter that they keep locked away, so who can be sure?"

"Good grief."

"People go to interesting lengths to keep blood pure." He was steepling his fingers under his chin. His hair had nearly dried and it had taken on a staticky quality, fanning out around his head like a corona.

"What about men?"

"What about men?"

"Men loving men, I mean."

"Homosexuality?" Lucius leaned forward, his elbows on his knees.

"Being gay," Ginny repeated. "Is that allowed in Pureblood society?"

"Somewhat," Lucius began. He looked intent, and Ginny realised that she liked him like this, when he was _intent_ on discussion and not belittling. "Every Pureblood male has to marry and procreate. It's not an option. Continuing the bloodline is a given. I'm not sure of the logistics, really. A few of my cousins enjoyed the company of men far more than women, but they married and had children nonetheless—perhaps they never even consummated their marriages and other methods were taken." He looked thoughtful. "But men can have male 'mistresses', for lack of a better term. It is not a homophobic society. My society simply places more value on children than sexual happiness." There was a touch of bitterness in his voice.

"Have you ever been with a man?" She asked the question to goad, as queerness was simply not often talked about in Wizarding society. She wanted to see if she could raise his shackles, as a seeming straight man.

"Yes," he said, his voice placid, and he leaned back onto the divan.

She hadn't expected him to be so straightforward.

"Really?" She breathed out the question before she could stop herself.

"No, I just said that to get your knickers in a knot."

"Don't talk about my knickers," she said firmly.

"My younger days—it was the seventies. It was a different time." He was not apologetic or awkward about it. Rather, he seemed happily reminiscent. "And the revels were hedonistic. They always have been. Men are better than women at some things, after all."

Ginny was struck, suddenly, which the breadth of his carnal knowledge. This was a man with so many years of partnering under his belt. She put her pen down and looked at him.

He looked back, his eyebrows raised.

"It's an interesting world, Ginevra. But it has changed from how it used to be." He looked almost melancholy for a moment. "You should come to one of the society events." He nodded at her. "If you really want to know the world I grew up in."

There was silence as she gawked at him. Then—

"Would I be your plus-one?"

"Yes," he said. "I wouldn't dream of sending you into that scrum alone. You'd either faint or—" He contemplated her for a moment. "—throw a punch."

"I don't want to be your date."

"There are other things I'd rather do than show up to a society gala with a blood traitor on my arm."

"You are such a _shit_," Ginny said, her voice thick and strong.

"Language."

He wanted to get a rise out of her. There was a party coming up at the Parkinson house in about three weeks time, and he had asked her to be his guest partly as a joke. Lucius still received all of the invitations to the pureblood soirees, even though he had not gone to one in years. The last time he had gone had been when Draco had cajoled him into it, and so he had trailed along with both his son and his daughter-in-law, Asteria, and had felt like a bloody stupid third wheel and had left early. He smirked, internally, thinking of what the woman in front of him would respond.

"Fine."

"_What_?"

"Fine," she said, meeting his eyes.

Lucius resisted the urge to break out in raucous laughter. He had not really anticipated that she might have said _yes_. He had expected a little spitting match, for her to toss her hair and snarl at him, not for her to acquiesce. Now he was going to have to follow through.

_Damn_.

"Do you have a dress?"

"No," Ginny said, almost defensively. Lucius wondered if he had struck a nerve, and then remembered all of the taunting he had done throughout her youth in terms of the Weasley poverty. He shifted in his seat, refusing to feel bad.

"Well, buy one."

"Can you give me a little more information than that?" She suddenly looked slightly panicked and he was amused.

"This is a dinner party. Do you know what fork to use in what instance?" He took a little pleasure in seeing her face twist.

"Not really."

"You're lucky you're a pureblood, despite being a blood traitor." Ginny opened her mouth as though to protest, but he made a quick hand motion and she shut it again with a click. "Wear something full-length. A ball-gown, Ginevra. I don't care what colour it is. I'm not going to be matching you so I don't care. I don't care who designs it—wizard, Muggle, porcupine, no matter. Just make it nice. Think of the kind of dress that you could wear with evening gloves. Full opulence. No expense spared." He had gotten a sort of introspective look in his eyes, remembering the old days of the old balls.

She was staring at him with an undeterminable look on her face. He snapped back to attention.

"Can you handle that?"

If she noticed the amount of vitriol in his voice, she chose not to comment on it.

"I can handle that." Her voice was just as vitriolic. "I'm not slow."

"_Ha_," he barked out, and she very nearly bared her teeth at him.

They became quiet, and Lucius watched her.

"Why did you touch me?"

He hadn't expected to ask the question, and was rather taken aback that he had. He had been thinking it in his mind, over and over again, nearly screaming it at her across the tunnels of his brain, but he had refused to ask it of her. He didn't want to appear needy or too invested in their relationship, but his mouth has misbehaved, had spoken out of turn, and so now he was bound to what he had just said.

She looked at him.

"At your pool?"

"Yes."

"Because you needed to be touched," she said, and folded her writing pad into her satchel.

He sat and watched as she gathered her belongings and left. Apparently it was as simple as that—that she had sensed that he had needed to be touched. There was nothing more that she had said.


	5. Chapter 5

"Oh, good. You're early," Lucius said as he opened the front door of the Manor for her.

"That's charming. Not even a 'hello, you look nice,'" she muttered, shoving past him, her cloak swirling around her ankles as she did so.

"Well, you're covered up by that cloak. You could be wearing a swimming costume under there for all I know." He sounded bored, was fixing his cuffs on his right hand. Ginny knew that his comment was ridiculous because he could clearly see the reams of blue material coming out from under the black outerwear.

He looked good. She could afford him that. The dress robes he had on were ridiculously expensive-looking, with silver mink fur around the collar. She could see the white button-up shirt from between the silver-embroidered lapels of the robe, and the white bow tie he had on underneath. He had tied his hair back with a black velvet ribbon. Even his leather boots were extremely well polished.

"Well?"

He was speaking to her.

"Well _what_," she replied, terse and anxious.

"Well—take off that blasted cloak and let me have a look at you. If you look ridiculous I can't take you tonight," he said harshly, and with that, he stepped over to her and started to unbutton her cloak without so much as asking her permission.

"Get _off_ of me," she snapped, and shoved him back from her with brutal force. He took it well, his body solid, his fingers finishing the job of unclasping the garment before she managed to fully react, and he stepped a foot away from her as her cloak fell to the floor, unheeded.

There was silence. Ginny refused to meet his eyes for a moment.

She had gone shopping at some of the most expensive Muggle stores she had ever been in. It had been a long, long time since Ginevra Weasley had gone shopping for a dress purely for an event. Perhaps the last time she had done so had been before her children had been born, when she had had more money and more time and more fame, and had just been _more_. More slender. More beautiful.

It had taken time to find this dress. She had very nearly burst into tears when she had found something that had fit her properly and looked right.

The dress was extravagant. It was a lighter, iridescent blue colour, a shade that Ginny hardly ever wore. She had wanted to wear green, as it worked best with her hair, but she hadn't wanted to stroke Lucius' ego in any way. The material was a stiff silk, and made a comforting sound when she walked, a sort of _shushing_. It was an interesting cut, piled high on only one shoulder, the other completely bare, with wide bands of material wrapping around the bodice down to mid-thigh, where the dress suddenly billowed into a full and luscious skirt. It was the most expensive and beautiful and silliest thing she had ever bought, let alone wear.

She felt ridiculous in it, and yet also strangely soothed, as though its dramatic cut made it a sort of armour for the night she was about to face. When she had twisted her hair up behind her head and pinned it into a tight French roll, she had felt quite lovely for a moment, beneath the makeup and the hair products and the simple silver earrings she was wearing.

She hadn't been able to afford the fancy jewellery she had wanted to buy to accompany the outfit.

Ginny finally got the nerve to meet Lucius' eyes—but she found that she couldn't see them properly.

His eyes were all over her, he knew that—from the creamy slope of her shoulder to the ample lines of her chest to the swan-like white of her exposed arm—she had somehow, _somehow_ managed to pull it off flawlessly. Even in her tetchy state as she stood in front of him she still looked lovely, a pink stain working its way across her cheekbones. Lucius tapped, briefly, into her emotions, suddenly realised that she felt insecure in her attire and perhaps her body, and then thought it ridiculous.

He was quiet, looking at her hemline, her waistline—still slender after bearing three children to that _Potter_—the delicate boning of her wrists. He thought that she thought herself larger and ungainly, but she was wrong, there. There was a sweet softness to her body that made her succulently womanly. Even though the boning of the dress pulled her waist into a very feminine hourglass figure, the satiny flesh of her breasts was pushed up, creating a now-flushed and lovely cleavage.

She looked like a _woman_, something she had not done at any of their meetings, at any point.

_Fuck_. He was reacting to her, his body quickly becoming a turncoat.

"_Well_?" Her word exploded out of her, and she cringed for how desperate it sounded in the front hall of the cavernous house. He was so impassive that she was irrationally afraid that she had gotten it completely wrong, that she looked like some misled fourth-year at the Yule Ball.

And then he met her eyes full on—his were scorching, and she almost flinched at the intensity. And then—then the look was gone, and he was collected and inscrutable again, his arms crossed over his broad chest.

"It's good," he said, nodding.

Ginny's eyes narrowed slightly, her eyebrows soft, and she looked at him as though she were determining something. And then she, too, let her look drop, and her arms uncrossed, and all of a sudden she was more confident, her head tilting back comfortably as she surveyed him.

"I couldn't—I didn't have any other jewellery to wear," she said softly, breaking the silence, and Lucius looked her over, could see that she was right.

"There's nothing wrong with the bareness of your collarbones," Lucius said, matter-of-fact, and Ginny blinked. "But you're right," he continued, adjusting his tie and tilting his head at her. "One moment." Before she could blink again, he had turned and disappeared.

Ginny flicked at her nails confusedly.

He reappeared a moment later, and walked purposefully over to her. Ginny resisted the urge to back up, and instead held her ground, staring at him. He eclipsed her, the scenery behind him, was full in front of her, and she inhaled subtly, could smell him. He smelled nice, like musky pine and chipped quartz and, strangely, rose. It was soothing, and her mind was slightly numbed, and she didn't react properly when he lifted his arms. She did, however, react when he reached his arms around her neck. Ginny fought the urge to smack him away, a vestige of her war days, and instead gritted her teeth.

"What. Are. You. Doing?" Her voice was rock and diamond.

"Stay," he said dismissively, as though he were talking to one of his peafowl. Her eyes widened, and just as she was about to bat him away, she felt the ropey coolness of a necklace upon her breastbone, and he stepped back fluidly.

Ginny said nothing, but turned instead to the hallway mirror, silent as she surveyed her appearance. The lighting was dim—half of the candles were extinguished in the foyer—but she could still make out the thing that he had draped around her neck.

"Opals," she said quietly.

"I like them," he replied nonchalantly, twiddling over her shoulder with something on his shirt. He seemed to be obsessed with his appearance, and she wondered if that was a manifestation of nervousness. If so, he was hiding it well.

"Whose necklace is this?"

"It didn't belong to Narcissa, if that is what you are wondering," he said tersely, his eyes still not meeting hers in the mirror. "It's belonged to _my_ side of the family for years, but for some reason, opals are often looked down upon. Funny, that."

Ginny was struck with how much of a couple they looked, side by side in the hallway mirror, Lucius over her shoulder because of his height, and she swallowed quickly, taking four steps backwards, jarring him in the process.

He looked at her, almost quizzically.

"Aren't they supposed to be bad luck?" Ginny hated how her voice was almost quavering.

"I guess we'll see." His voice was low, and the words had an odd feeling of finality.

* * *

><p>Lucius had taken her in a coach and four. She had shaken her head at that, reminded of the Muggle tale of Cinderella. He had, actually, held the door open for her, but then had ruined the moment of chivalry by barking at her to "hurry her arse" and she had purposefully stepped on his leather-shod foot with her pointed high heel as she had walked past him.<p>

His hiss of pain had been pleasing to her ears, but she had ignored him, settling into the coach, leaning back against the leather seat and arranging her lovely material around her. She had felt as though she was a cloud, a meringue, a lovely dessert.

Once inside, Lucius had sat back heavily in his own seat, across from her, and had promptly closed his eyes. She had felt the lurch of the coach starting, and for the following forty minutes had watched him silently.

* * *

><p>When the coach had slowed to a stop, Lucius opened his eyes.<p>

Ginny was struck with how old he had looked, just for those forty minutes. There had been something vulnerable in him, something very real. She wondered if he was at all looking forward to the night. She was not, really, and yet was. She was curious to see what his world was like, but she also had a nagging suspicion that he had not been to one of these gatherings in a very long time. Ginny wondered if she had saddled herself with a pariah.

She shoved those thoughts out of her mind. She was the pariah, really. She was considered a blood traitor by these people, and yet she was not scared.

On the other side of the coach, Lucius was thinking, his mind a maze of despairing thoughts. He watched her as her fingers absentmindedly came up to the necklace he had clasped onto her, her fingernails clicking subtly over the jewels. She seemed unused to the opulence, but yet interestingly comfortable in her dress.

"I'd prepare you for tonight, but I just—I feel too tired to." He saw no sense in lying. He felt exhausted and they hadn't even started the night properly yet. His entire body ached—his shoulders were tense, and he could feel a cold sweat starting between the blades and under his arms.

She turned her head to look at him in the dim light of the carriage, and he was interested in her luminescence. The opals seemed to cast a reflective light off of her face.

"Anything I should definitely know?"

"Follow my lead with utensils at dinner. Don't _hit_ anybody. There will probably be a dance. I don't know. I don't know." He exhaled.

Ginny stared at him. "Are you alright?"

"I feel very tired all of a sudden," he murmured, and then blinked once, and sat up straight, exhaling again. "Bugger."

That was when she laughed out loud, breaking the terse silence of the coach. Lucius looked at her curiously, his mouth softer than before.

"What the _hell_ are we doing here?" Ginny's question cracked with the roils of her laughter. "I've gone a bit hysterical. Oh, god."

Her laughter made him feel a bit better, and a bit more open.

"It's been a few good years since I've been to one of these society gatherings," Lucius said quietly.

"I gathered as much," she replied.

"I may be just as gauche as you are," Lucius said, almost smiling.

"Well, let's get pissed on champagne and be outrageous. I'll try to not embarrass you in front of your peers, though," she said, still laughing a little.

"Fantastic," he muttered, adjusting his collar as she threw the door of the carriage open, a full gust of wind blowing in.

* * *

><p>Ginny stood at the large windows of the formal ballroom. The Parkinson house was nice enough, and so far the evening was nice enough, if not a little boring.<p>

She thought it might have been from the shock. When the front door of the mansion had opened and Violet and Atticus Parkinson saw the trademark red Weasley hair standing there beside the trademark light Malfoy hair, their eyebrows had shot into their hairlines.

Ginny laughed to remember as Violet had taken her hand, gob smacked, and had held it briefly as Lucius had exchanged pleasantries with Atticus. Atticus, for his part, had kissed the top of her hand with dry lips, his eyes still peculiarly wide.

"What an—interesting—dress, my dear." The slightly barbed comment from Violet's still stunned lips didn't slide unnoticed by Ginny, but she had had a lot of experience with cruel Slytherins, and this had been on the mild end of the scale. Ginny had smiled brilliantly and replied "it's Muggle," before inclining her head and walking off with Lucius.

Their hosts had stood silently in the foyer, watching their retreating forms.

Lucius had insisted on taking her arm and walking her through the grand ballroom, and Ginny had almost laughed out loud at the stiffness of his elbow joint, the absolute grace that he held himself with. Even though he had confided that he hadn't really wanted to be present at this gathering, he still had the entire façade down pat.

Maybe it was the haughty, cold tilt of his face, and the harsh slant of his nose that he looked down, and maybe it was the similar expression that she adopted as armour, but as they made their way across the—stunningly beautiful—room, shocked looks abounded but nobody made cruel comments.

Ginny, for her part, was busy absorbing the scene. Maybe she was misinformed, but she had expected something a little more illustrious, something with beautiful people fanning themselves, slumped insouciantly against the marble walls, swilling champagne, flirting outrageously. Perhaps in the past these gatherings had been like that, but the people she was eyeing now—as she was being surreptitiously dragged across the floor by her mulish date—were older. It was a sea of grey hair and silvered moustaches. Everyone looked perfectly dapper, with the occasional gaudy monstrosity of a dress or an ascot.

Maybe the war had stunted the prior and incredible malice of the pureblood society. Ginny had so far been underwhelmed with the lack of barbed remarks—she had been expecting to be verbally flagellated. Instead, she felt a great sort of sadness pervading the entire situation. The once-illustrious families of pureblood society now all looked tired, so much older than they were. Everything seemed a bit ragged around the edges.

She was now sitting beside Lucius on a divan. He had gotten them both a glass of champagne.

"Everyone looks tired," she mumured.

"Everyone probably is."

She was quiet for a moment, and then spoke again. "It seems like just—a big show." She was talking quietly so that only Lucius could hear her observations. Even as she spoke, she kept her face bland and almost arrogant so that nobody else could divine what she was murmuring to him.

He swallowed champagne and nodded, the slightest movement. "I'm glad that you noticed that, too."

Ginny resisted the urge to snap her head around in surprise at how he had just agreed with her. He sounded almost amicable, when usually he was trying his hardest to rile her. There was obviously something about being amongst his old peers that was either weakening him or building him up—she couldn't tell.

"This society is crumbling, really. Everyone denies it, but it is," he continued.

"Why?"

"Why is it crumbling? Or why do people deny?"

"Er—both, I suppose," she answered.

"Well, it's crumbling because it has no place in this world anymore. Try as we might, the Muggle influence is leaching into our world, and—in some regards—they are surprisingly advanced."

Ginny gaped at him.

"Close your mouth. Are you trying to catch flies? As I was saying, with such advancement all around us—welcome or not—we are quite evidently lagging. And there is nothing to do except wait for the demise of this society and its rules. And as for why people are denying—well, change is hard, is it not?"

"It is," Ginny agreed.

He brought a hand up to his face and rubbed at his eyes—quick enough so that nobody would notice and pounce on his outward display of weakness.

"Are you all right?"

"I'm all right," he murmured, taking a sip from his flute. "Are you all right? Dinner is soon."

"Bugger them all," she whispered back. "I don't care what fucking fork I use."

"Oh, lord," Lucius said, swallowing down a chuckle with another swig of champagne. "Can you just watch me and try to follow my lead?" She started to speak but he held up his hand. "I realise that it is not in your nature to _follow_, but just for this once. For propriety's sake."

Ginny stared. He looked almost beseeching.

"Oh, _fine_."

"I take it you were revelling in the idea of prying apart a crab with your fingers and the dessert fork, and seeing your hostess' aghast face?" Lucius almost laughed at the look on Ginny's own face.

"Perhaps."

He was acutely aware of her body. The divan was small enough that he could feel the heat of her. They were not touching, but still their bodies were close together. He could smell her from where he was sitting—salt and night queen flower. It was an odd combination.

"I don't really want to be here anymore," Ginny sighed.

Lucius looked sideways at her.

"And neither do you," she continued, without even looking at him to verify.

She could feel his gust of a sigh through the subtle expanse and tightening of his ribs, which were against her own torso.

"That's probably true."

"You were right, though." She felt his surprise at being called _right_ by her through the tension of his skin. She continued. "There was no way for me to understand this bloody society unless I did witness it. So—good call on bringing me here."

Lucius laughed, but it was an odd laugh—sort of bitten off and sharp. She winced at the sound of it.

"You've—miraculously—held up your end of the bargain."

Ginny resisted no longer—she snaked a hand between their bodies and pinched him as hard as she could.

Lucius' face changed into a tense mask as he held in his bark of pain.

"Ouch."

"Don't be rude," she mumbled, swigging from her glass.

"You drink like a sailor."

"I grew up around brothers, moron."

"Watch your damn tone."

Their exchange was hardly cruel. Their insults, throughout their time spent together over the past weeks, had become rote and smooth, exchanged with a thread of good-natured intelligence, with an overlay of past-bred aggression.

Somewhere, a tone chimed.

Ginny frowned. "Is that the call to dinner? How goddamned pretentious."

Lucius fought his own urge to pinch her, and instead stood with a suffering sigh, extended his hand to her.

Ginny loosened the frown on her face, and, after a moment of inhaling, extended her own hand up, and took his fingers with her own.

* * *

><p>After dinner, Ginny watched as the couples danced across the floor.<p>

"They look good at this, at least."

Lucius was over her shoulder, observing as well. He hummed an assent. "They've been bred to do this since childhood. We all have."

"Are you going to ask me to dance?"

Coming from any other woman, the question might have been unbearably coquettish, and he would have refused, suspicious and weary. But she had asked it with a simple, frank look on her face. She was not angling for his cock or his wallet. She genuinely wanted to know if he was going to ask her to dance. Lucius liked that. And because of that—

"Well, can you?"

"Dance?"

"Can you at least _waltz_?" Lucius asked the question under his breath. Ginny laughed out loud at the look on his face.

"Yes, I can," she replied. "My mum taught me in our kitchen."

"Lovely," he replied sarcastically, and took her hand. "Put down your damned drink."

Ginny complied, and Lucius led her out to the dance floor. Without any preamble, he pulled her body into position, a safe distance away from his own, and placed her hands on his shoulder and in his hand. His other hand went to her back.

The span of his hand was pleasant. She had never before realised how large his hands actually were, how long the fingers were that spread across her back. She tilted her head back slightly, looking him in the face. He appeared to be faraway, thinking of elsewhere, but as his peripheral vision caught her movement, he looked back down at her, his eyebrows raising slightly, his mouth gently pursed. Their eyes met, and Ginny instinctively crossed hers, making her pupils go awry. When she refocused her vision, she noticed him trying not to smile.

"This party is boring," she whispered to him.

Lucius gave her a look.

"You were the one who wanted to come," he answered back.

"For research."

"Are you sure it wasn't just to steal a dance from me?" From anyone else the comment would have been slightly flirtatious and funny, but from Lucius it sounded calmly arrogant.

Ginny pinched his shoulder and he frowned at her.

"Stop pinching me."

"You're the one who invited me. Are you sure that you just didn't want to look down my dress while dancing?"

"Perhaps," he answered, but he sounded distracted and was looking elsewhere, over her shoulder. She wished that she had worn higher heels.

"Are you all right?" Her voice was almost whispered.

"What?" He tore his attention away from the rest of the crowd and looked down at her.

"You look—well, you look bloody awful," Ginny murmured. It was true—but maybe she was the only one to notice. Outwardly, he appeared pristine—every hair in place, every facial expression held immobile and frozen. But there was an extreme tiredness to his eyes, dark shadows starting to appear under his lower eyelashes. She mentally chided herself—she had spent so much time with Lucius Malfoy that she was starting to notice his subtlest facial changes.

"Thank you," he remarked, voice dry. "That is charming."

"But seriously—"

"I'm fine. I just feel tired. This gathering has taken—a little more out of me than I had anticipated." He could feel his shoulders bunching under her hand, and willed himself to stop. In truth, he was exhausted. He wanted to go home and curl up under a heavy duvet, or, at the very least, escape to his coach and lie down on the bench in there. Today was one of the worse days, and he had been foolish to persevere with still going out.

Ginny pinched his side again.

"Don't be naughty," he said.

"I'm not a child," she replied, frowning back at him.

"Stop frowning. The others will wonder what is wrong with us."

She was about to reply that he had been the one who had frowned first, but instead she sighed and shut her mouth.

His movements were economical—no grand gestures in dance, here, but elegance. A younger Lucius of yore might have spun delicately, used more elaborate hand movements, but the Lucius of the present conserved his energy through concise and measured movements.

"This party _is_ boring. You're right," he said, his face and voice deadpan. Ginny nodded.

"When can we leave?"

Instead of chiding her as she had expected, he thought for a moment. "Tradition dictates probably another 45 minutes at the least."

Ginny rolled her eyes.

"Behave," he murmured, still looking over her shoulder. "We can at least dance for some of that."

"Good," she said, and she noticed him looking down at her in mild surprise, as if he were shocked that she could ever consider dancing with him a good thing. "Well, you're a nice dancer," she clarified defensively.

He had a smile on his face that was almost smug, and so she pinched him again.

* * *

><p>Riding home in the coach, Ginny resisted the urge to rest her head on Lucius' shoulder, instead opting to tilt it back against the headrest opposite, her eyes slipping closed.<p>

"Are you tired?"

"No, I just wanted to look at the inside of my eyelids for a while," she retorted. "Yes, I am tired. I'm rarely out this late."

"It's only half-twelve," Lucius said, looking at his pocket watch, but his hands shook as he made the motions, and Ginny noticed, though didn't comment.

"When you have children you fall asleep earlier." She pried her high heels off and threw them to the floor of the coach, pressing her thumbs into the soles of her feet.

"I know," he said. "Draco was notorious for keeping Narcissa and myself active throughout the day."

At that statement, Ginny raised her head to look at him.

"What? Did you think I never played with my child?" He frowned at her. "I'll be the first to admit that I wasn't the best father in some regards, but when Draco was wee I was extremely hands-on," he said, his mouth still hard and turned down at the corners. "And then—things—picked up in other—aspects—of my life, and I—" he hesitated, looking out the window at the rain lashing, "I abandoned him, in a way." Ginny watched his hands clench in his lap, a little surprised at his outpouring.

Then he collected himself, and he looked back at her with even eyes.

"I'm assuming our parenting styles were different," he said, cynically.

"Maybe," Ginny replied.

"Draco was always wanting to ride brooms. _Always_. He broke his collarbone because of that at age six. I thought Narcissa was going to flay me." Lucius smiled slightly. "As I was the one who had given him his first toy broom. He had, obviously, gone too fast on it and had fallen off, hitting himself on the edge of one of our fountains." Ginny smiled at that mental picture. "He screamed. Oh, _god_, how he screamed. Didn't cry, just screamed at us. And then Narcissa screamed at me."

"How old were you when you had him?"

"I was 26 years old. Older than some of my pureblood compatriots, but still not at all ready for a child."

"And Narcissa—"

"Was 25. We were old enough, I suppose," he said, thoughtful. "But a screaming child shakes up your day-to-day life. I even considered cutting my hair short."

She burst out laughing at that.

"I considered that, too," Ginny said. "I was only 23 when James was born." She trailed off slightly, remembering. "I was definitely too young. People that age are supposed to be exploring and having adventures and having lots of sex with different people, not married and with child."

"Have you talked to Potter lately?"

The question was so random and so abrupt that Ginny blinked. Lucius was watching her, outwardly placid, and she grimaced.

"Why do you want to know?"

"Have you?" He pressed the question, and she shrugged slightly.

"Sometimes. We are trying to be friends. Or friendly, at least. This is entirely inappropriate for me to be talking about with you, by the way." Her words lacked vitriol and he shrugged carelessly.

"I don't care what is appropriate or not."

"Sometimes you do," Ginny said softly. "You care about propriety. Make up your mind."

The coach jolted slightly and she bounced in her seat. She missed that his eyes went directly to her breasts, his sight absorbing the movement of her chest.

"I care about propriety—often—in public. I care about propriety when I—when I feel—"

"Threatened," Ginny finished, looking at him.

"I suppose," he admitted grudgingly. He looked grumpy, as though she had figured out some startling secret.

"That's why you're so mercurial with your moments of propriety. Sometimes you act like a maniac, and sometimes you act like a gentleman," she said, matter-of-factly. "It drives me crazy."

"I'm glad to know that," he murmured, looking out the coach window at the rain. "Usually I like rain but this is too grey for my liking."

Ginny rolled her eyes at his changing the topic, and then noticed the set of his mouth. "Is something wrong? You look—er—upset."

"No," he said tightly.

She couldn't for the life of her figure out where his change in demeanour had come from.

Lucius clenched his hands. He just wanted to get back to the Manor.

* * *

><p>"Here we are," Ginny said, somewhat brightly and completely unnecessarily, as the coach pulled up to the front door of the Manor.<p>

Lucius had fallen asleep for the rest of the ride home after the last bits of their conversation, and Ginny had been open-mouthed at that. It surprised her that he was able to let his guard down enough around her to actually _sleep_. He had simply tilted his head back and rested his neck on the seat back, drifting off, and his breathing had become slow and deep and lovely.

He opened his eyes and looked at her. "What? Oh."

"Really. What is _wrong_ with you right now?"

"Sometimes I merely get very tired very quickly. I think it's a dreg from my darker days—some sort of leftover stress from—spells. Spell poisoning, perhaps."

"_What_?" Ginny shook her head back and forth. "Spell poisoning?"

"For lack of a better name, yes," he sighed, and pulled his gloves on with fastidious—albeit shaky—motions. "Come." He beckoned to her, and, still agog, she followed him out of the coach. His movements were as poised as ever, but Ginny could see the fraying around the edges.

They began the long and eerie walk to his front door. Ginny was looking at him, surreptitiously, through side-eyed glances.

"What are you staring at me for?"

"Well, you just told me that you have a long-lasting, malingering sort of spell poisoning, and you look as though you're about to collapse on me. Why _wouldn't_ I be looking at you?" Her voice came out snappier than she had intended.

"So spirited," he mumbled, and drew up to the front door, laying his palm flat against the wood paneling. The door swung open, and Ginny was intrigued. She had never before seen how the door to Malfoy Manor was accessed.

While she was pondering the door, Lucius grunted. Ginny whipped her head around to look at him, and noticed that he was propping himself against the doorframe with his left forearm.

"Do you need any—help?" She moved a step closer to him and reached out, her palm brushing against his robes.

"Don't _touch me_," he snarled.

"Oh, good god," Ginny barked. "You waltzed with me all night. You can handle my hand on your body, you stupid arse."

His forearm started to slide down the frame, and his face was paler than usual, tiny, tiny beads of sweat caught in the lightness of his eyebrows. His jaw was tight, as though he was holding his teeth together in effort.

"Don't touch me," he repeated as she wedged her shoulder in his right underarm, but the words were less vehement than before. Ginny rolled her eyes, and, after a quick moment of debating, slung her left arm around his waist.

He was solid and warmer than she had expected, and she very nearly let go of him in surprise, but held on, and began walking him over the threshold into the front hall of the Manor.

"Hello?" Her voice rang out. "I need a little help." She wasn't sure who she was yelling for, but hopefully someone or something would appear.

"Oh, shut up," he hissed. "Don't call any more bloody attention to this _debacle_."

"No, you shut up, you stubborn pig. I don't know where to take you, so I can't use magic, and you're obviously in _no_ state to heave yourself anywhere. So unless you want to lie in your front hall all night—which I would be happy to do, by the way—you will just be quiet."

He grunted in response, just as one of his house-elves Apparated in front of the two of them.

"Oh, thank goodness," Ginny said. Lucius was not a light man, and her left shoulder was starting to fall asleep.

The elf's eyes were wide. "You shouldn't be carrying the Master. Usually we do that."

Ginny darted her eyes over to Lucius, whose jaw had gone rigid. The elf seemed to realise its mistake immediately, and took two steps back just as Lucius swung forward with his cane, snarling wordlessly. Ginny lunged at the same time, taking a half step toward him, swinging into his reach in front of him, using her rusty Quidditch skills. Lucius' cane hit her full force on her right thigh, and she resisted the urge to cry out, instead pushing viciously at his shoulders, forcing him back from the situation.

His face changed rapidly—moving from surprise to guilt to anger again, and then to uncertainty.

"Lucius. Get a goddamned _grip_ on yourself!" Her voice had reached her "mother" pitch—the tone that she used to neutralize her misbehaving children. It seemed to somewhat work on him, because he dropped his cane to his side, his body collapsing slightly. "I realise that you don't want people to know your moments of weakness, but hitting an elf for accidentally revealing that you need _help_ once in a while is _not fine_."

She breathed in to say more, but that was when his eyes rolled back and he hit the floor.

* * *

><p>He knew that someone else was with him. He could sense it even before he opened his eyes. And there was a fire in the hearth. He hadn't set one. Someone had to have set one. He could hear the crackling and popping, could feel the warmth from where he was laying.<p>

_Laying_?

Lucius opened his eyes and started.

Ginny was kneeling right beside him, her face a few mere inches away from his.

"What _the—_" he started, his voice not quite a bellow. He made as if to rise from the couch he was lying on, but Ginny slapped a hand into the middle of his chest and shoved him back down with a surprising strength.

"Lie _down_," she snapped. His eyebrows rose. "You are a fucking broken man, do you know that?"

Lucius frowned even deeper at her statement. "That's charming," he mumbled.

"What the _hell _is wrong with you?"

That was when he noticed that her voice was shaking—very, very slightly—and that she was looking away from him. A realisation flashed into his quick mind.

"Were you worried?"

There was a thick silence and she turned back to him, her face set stonily.

"Why did you just faint?"

She was avoiding his question. He stored that fact away for later.

"I told you. It's some sort of spell poisoning, or something."

"Or _something_?"

"I've never gone to a healer for it," Lucius said. "I merely get easily fatigued sometimes, and if I don't rest, I can—faint. It doesn't happen too often, but it has occurred before, and I'm sorry if it worried you."

The firelight was playing across his face, and from what Ginny could see, he was completely serious.

"You've never gone to a healer?"

"No," he said, stubbornly. "It's just something that I've noticed since my—my days. From the past. I don't think it's necessary to go see a healer about."

"Why?"

"Consider it a _penance_."

Ginny wanted to tell him that that was the stupidest idea she had ever heard, but there was something ragged in his eyes that made her stop.

"God," she exhaled, dropping her head down onto the couch, her hairline touching his right arm. "What a fucking night."

He laughed, then.

"I suppose you always receive more than what you bargained for—with me."

"With any Malfoy, it seems," Ginny replied, rolling her eyes. "Is this why you left our first meeting so abruptly?"

He wanted to ask her what she had just meant—that comment about _any Malfoy_, but he resisted. "Most probably," Lucius said. "The exhaustion—it's bone deep." That was all he wanted to tell her on that subject. It wasn't proper to expose his greatest weaknesses to somebody, much less the female Weasley. "That's all," he said, firmly.

"You can tell me when you're tired, you know," she said, tugging at a strand of her own hair that had come loose from the bun. "If you feel too exhausted to keep meeting or talking."

"I'm not a fucking _invalid_," he spat at her. Ginny moved back suddenly, taken aback at his anger.

"I never said you were," she replied, voice careful.

"But now you know all my bloody weaknesses." He had raised himself somewhat on his elbows so that he could yell at her more effectively. Lying down made him feel uncomfortable. He wouldn't have put it past her to put a pillow over his face and try to smother him to shut him up. "I never asked for you to know all of my weakest parts," he said, frustrated, his arms shaking with the effort of holding himself up. "And I don't want these to be put in the paper."

"These?"

He fell onto his back, his biceps giving out. "This spell poisoning. And—and _these_," he hissed, gesturing vaguely to his back. "I hate that you know. I don't want the whole world to."

He shut up, then, breathing in hard through his nose and looking up at the ceiling. He hated losing his temper, especially around her.

"I won't, then." She straightened, standing up, her knees cracking uncomfortably as she did so. She grimaced, smoothing down the wrinkles from her dress. Lucius lay on the couch, watching her carefully with dark eyes. "I'm going home now. Open up a Floo for me."

"I don't do that."

"I don't care. It's damn late and I don't feel comfortable walking the grounds of the Manor in order to get to the front gate." She stared at him, her arms over her chest.

Lucius stared back, and then sighed, rolling over slightly, and pointed his wand at the hearth.

"There. Go ahead. There's powder in the urn on the far right." It wasn't exactly how he wanted to end the evening—on that odd note, a sort-of argument still hanging in the air, but it seemed that that was how it was going to end.

"You are so queer, keeping your Floo access permanently closed," Ginny said, shaking her head slightly.

"Hm." He grunted softly from behind her, sounding slightly strained, and so she set the top of the urn down on the mantle and turned back to look at him.

Lucius only wanted to sit up properly so he could push his hair back from his face. It was warm by the fireplace, but the exhaustion was so thorough that his arms were still shaking from before. He didn't want to ask her for help, but when she turned around, she shook her head and moved over to him before he could tell her to bugger off.

"This is when I act my age, I suppose," he said, his voice bitter and embarrassed.

"Sod off," she replied, a half-smile in her voice. She sat beside him on the couch and slid her hands under his shoulders, pulling him towards her. Even as she moved him upright, he turned his head away from her. "You're not elderly, you stupid pillock," she said, trying to reinforce that in him, but he looked away from her, his jaw clenched.

Ginny sighed silently. He was one of the most stubborn people she had ever known. His long, silver hair was stuck to the back of his neck, the skin sweaty and flushed—from being so close to the fire, she supposed. Somehow the tie had come out of his hair in the shuffle from the hall to the sitting room.

It seemed that touch often worked well for Lucius. So Ginny shoved aside her rational brain, and reached out.

He felt the movement of her body before he felt her touch on his neck. He started, instinctively moving away from her, but Ginny was faster, closed her fist around the entire mass of his hair, and then he was stuck, unable to move any farther away.

"Let go of me," he ground out.

"Don't be fucking stupid," she said, and tugged on his hair, moving him closer to her. "I'm going to braid it for you."

"I don't need you to do that," he mumbled. Technically, he could just grab his wand and do a plaiting charm on his hair, but then she combed her fingers through the mass of damp hair at the nape of his neck, and he lost his thoughts, let his eyes slip shut. A shiver went down his spine.

Ginny raised herself to her knees to get a better vantage point. He had turned docile under her hands. Her suspicion had been right. She thought that maybe he hadn't been touched enough during his lifetime—childhood, or marriage, or in the years that had passed since his divorce—and so now, when she laid her hands on him, it was a soothing touch. It reminded her of horses, and how they would stay under human hands.

His hair was _beautiful_. She touched it with envy, as her hair never looked as his did. It was so long—halfway down his back, a length that seemed at odds with his hyper-masculine being, the inherent male way that he held himself. But something about the odd dichotomy of his hair and his broad shoulders worked. She had been right in her very first evaluation of him—there was no blond left. It was all silver and white, streaming through her fingers like mercury, like spring water. She realised that she was sitting there, mindlessly petting him, but he was not complaining, and she had no urge to stop. His hair had always been such a point of fascination. And he smelled of salt and of lemon and cade, of fresh and deep things. Ginny let her fingertips wander up his hair, climbing to his scalp, and then she rubbed him there, letting her fingernails walk across his skin.

Lucius made a soft sound that was something between a gasp and a groan. Not many people—women—knew what an erogenous zone his scalp was. His hair was something that was usually kept bound back—during sex, during day-to-day relations—and so for someone to explore it as she was now doing made his mind tilt and spin. She was methodically pulling on sections of his hair, gradually relaxing his scalp piece by piece. There was a part of him that rebelled at what was happening—that, in his weakness, he was letting himself be petted like a cat—but the greater part of him was too absorbed in the physical sensations, too happy being touched to snap at her.

Ginny sighed. She had to go home—she was tired. It was late. The creamy silk of his hair felt nice across the heels of her hands and the joints of her fingers, but she couldn't stay like this all night long. She began to separate his hair into three sections, coming out each one so that they were each relatively straight, free of tangles. He leaned back into her slightly as she began to braid the sections into a loose plait.

As she got to the end, Lucius held his hand out to the side automatically. She was confused for a moment, but then noticed that he had a black ribbon in his palm.

Ginny laughed, and the odd silence was broken. She reached out to take it, and tied it expertly around the tip of the braid.

"There," she murmured, tugging lightly on the end of his hair.

"Thank you," he replied, his voice very soft. He was still facing away from her, but she let him be, rising from the couch, her dress making satisfying sounds as she walked to the fireplace again.

"You did look very beautiful tonight," he said, and his voice was so quiet that she was unsure of what he had said at first.

She turned half to look at him, her palm full of powder.

He was leaning back against the couch, facing her. The shadows under his eyes were dark purple and ghastly, but somehow they managed only to make his cheekbones appear that much starker, the bird-features of his face more handsome.

"Thank you," Ginny whispered, and felt tears at her eyes. How lovely those words were. How she had missed hearing them for all those rote years with Harry. All at once, she threw the powder in the hearth and fell backwards into the trip to her flat. Lucius' dry mouth, slightly open, was the last thing she saw.


	6. Chapter 6

**Just a little author's note - I have deliberately chosen to spell Asteria's name the way I have - it is not an error. Astoria is a hotel. Asteria - as seen on the Weasley family tree - is a Greek titan.**

**Thanks for all of the lovely reviews!**

* * *

><p>Sometimes she got really sad. Really, really sad. Sometimes she missed Harry so much that it felt like she had eaten tin, that if someone reach a hand down her throat and threw a fist around, all they would hear was clattering from her empty, hard gullet.<p>

The nights were hardest. They always were. She thought that maybe it was because during the day her mind was racing, planning, thinking. She kept herself busy all the time—owling her children at Hogwarts, settling the separation and impending divorce with Harry, coming to work and spending longer hours than needed there. Even Amorin had remarked that she "looked like shite" and probably "needed to take a little time off." She had laughed at him, and had gone back to making notes on the Cannons and their latest loss. And whenever she got home from work, she either made dinner right away, or booted up her computer and continued to write the article about Lucius.

Yes, Lucius. Somehow, he had become a fixture in her life. She saw him more than she saw Harry, which was such a ridiculous and alien concept that it made her laugh aloud to think of it.

What an irritating man he was. She had wondered, before the interview process had started, if she was going to be upset at being in his presence and in his home. They still had not spoken about the diary.

If she was honest with herself—she had forgotten about the diary years ago. Ginny didn't consider herself religious or particularly fatalistic—it was unpleasant to believe that a power greater than oneself was picking one's path, sight unseen—but she felt as though the diary had been a non-negotiable. Which was hard, and interesting to admit to herself. She had come to terms with that a long time ago. That without the diary she would have just been the youngest Weasley. Not particularly remarkable. In a sick and twisted way, the introduction to Lucius—and therefore Tom—had shaped her irrevocably. That it was going to happen sooner or later—that that diary was going to make its way into her hands, and if not that, then one of the other Horcruxes, and if not those, then something else. Maybe something worse. Something that was going to change her the way she was meant to be changed, malleable as she had been.

It was an odd way of looking at it. She had tried to explain it to Harry once—that without the diary she may not have met him, may not have had their children, may not have been the person she was to the day, that perhaps even the Horcrux hunt might not have happened, that _even_ perhaps the War might have had a different outcome, or that might have been no War—and he had shut her down completely. She had tried, once, to explain it to Hermione, who had reasoned her way around it. She had tried to tell it to Ron, who had guffawed.

Why did she always feel like the smartest of her friends and family? No—that was an exaggeration. Bill and Charlie were whip-smart, and mature, too. Her father was kind and genial and wanted knowledge like her brothers wanted food. But the rest of the family and the rest of the circle of post-War friends—Hermione, Harry, Ron, Percy, her mother, Tonks, all of them—she was smarter than them. Hermione was book-smart, but fucking stupid when it came to day to day life. She was raising her children to be neurotic little freaks, as lovely as they were, and as much as Ginny loved her own nieces and nephews. Her brothers were dolts, loveable as they were. Harry was a numpty who had been emotionally blinded by war glory and war pain.

Ginny shoved those thoughts aside. If she spent too long thinking them, then she became bitter and cruel, and it reflected in her outward appearance and in the way she interacted with people, and as feisty as she was at times, she didn't want to end up a bitter and judgmental old maid.

Though it was possible that she was on that path already.

She sighed, and flexed her fingers above the keyboard. She hadn't even noticed that the sun was setting, and that her flat was growing darker. She hadn't even had dinner yet, and so she left Lucius on the page, refusing to direct her thoughts toward him any more for the night because she wasn't sure where those thoughts were going, and she headed to the kitchen.

* * *

><p>The next time they met, Ginny brought her own record player. She always worked better with some music in the background, and she wanted to make notes before meeting with him. It was easy enough to bring into the Manor—shrunken and hidden in her purse—and while he went off to make a few calls, she set it up in the library.<p>

Yes, she was doing it to goad him. She was irked that they had only really scratched the surface of his personality and his life. She had the feeling that he was giving her as little as possible—the most frivolous details—every time they met so that he would be able to stretch the process on for as long as possible. She didn't know what his aims were in that. She wasn't sure that she wanted to know, because when she thought of it, she got a little odd inside.

She bent over her notes.

"What. The hell. Is this?"

Oh, there he was. Emerged from the bowels of the house like a bat out of hell, already grousing about something. She found that it was moments such as this that he truly, truly showed his age—his complaining.

Ginny looked up. Lucius appeared to have gritted his teeth together. His arms were crossed over his chest in such a petulant manner that she fought the urge to chuckle at him. She knew that that would be the worst thing that she could do—laugh at him.

"It's a record-player that my father rigged up to work in magical households. Isn't it lovely?" Ginny realised she was aggravating him, but she wanted him to at least enjoy the music. It was time to start dislodging that stick from his arse.

"_What_?" Lucius was riled at having some alien device in his home.

"I just brought it here to help me work—I write better with music, and when I used to live on my own in Muggle London I liked to explore the record shops."

Lucius frowned at her. "You lived in _Muggle_ London?"

"For a short time, yes. I hated the press and the publicity that I got as being a war survivor in Wizarding London." Ginny looked expectantly at him, and he realised that he knew exactly what she was talking about. It was the reason that he had become so reclusive in the Manor. "Anyway, I really started using the record player then. It gives off a better sound than the wireless. Warmer, I think. And I really started to become interested in older Muggle music."

He couldn't say that he loved the music coming from the machine, but he didn't mind it, either. It was reminiscent of the Wizarding music that he had listened to while growing up. Lucius frowned harder and made a grumpy sound in the back of his throat.

Ginny rolled her eyes and kept her head down, still writing. "Sit down if you're staying," she said shortly. She had notes to write. Sometimes just even being back in the Manor made her mind race, and things came to her as she walked through the house itself.

She stopped for a moment, still looking at the page. _Being back in the Manor_—she had said it in her brain as though it was one of her own homes that she was returning to. As though it had fond memories. That was interesting. She kept writing.

Lucius raised his eyebrows at her, but she missed it because of her downcast eyes, and so he sat down heavily on the couch, somewhat chastised. He looked to his left and surveyed the crackling device that was near to him.

Ten minutes later, Ginny looked up from her intensive writing and blinked. Lucius was standing, and bending over the turntable, examining it carefully. As she watched, he lifted the arm, and the music stopped. That was when he looked up at her with widened eyes. She raised her eyebrows at him, and he turned a bit red.

"How do I—" he started, and Ginny stood, coming to stand beside him. She gently took the fragile arm from his grip and crouched down, lining up the needle tip with one of the shiny grooves on the black of the vinyl record. Lucius watched the proceedings with hawkish eyes.

She stood and smiled at the song that started.

"I love The Shirelles," she murmured. He had no idea what she was talking about, but he was warming to the music. He had expected some severe Muggle tripe, but instead was enjoying the alternative to silence. It was not unlike wizarding music. He was alright with it, he supposed.

He watched her. She was moving her shoulders subtly, looking down at the record. There was an odd look on her face, something that reminded him of wistfulness. Lucius could see an adolescent quality in her, and realised that as a young girl, during those formative years, she was fighting a war. There were probably not so many dances for her—and he winced, inwardly, to realise that he had been on the opposite side of that war.

She exhaled quietly and started to walk back to her ottoman.

Until he caught her wrist firmly in his hand.

Ginny jerked her head up at him and started to scowl.

"Why are you touching me—" she started, her mouth turned down at the corners.

"Oh, shut up," he said, and pulled her to him.

Ginny's head jerked back like whiplash, and she stared up at him with a slightly furrowed brow.

He resisted the urge to laugh, and took her right hand in his left hand, bringing her body flush to his, resting his right hand on the small of her back. He was older, that was true, but one thing could be said of his age: he had grown up in a time when children were taught how to dance—properly.

And he felt nothing sexual in the embrace he had her in. She looked too flabbergasted to react. He had expected her to pull her hand out of his, but he was pleasantly surprised to feel her body acquiesce.

Ginny felt the tops of their thighs touching and she resisted the urge to pull away or laugh. The situation was _surreal_. Lucius Malfoy had not only accepted a Muggle device in his family home, he had shed some of his stuffy propriety and was now dancing with her in small circles in one of his sitting rooms. Not only that, but he seemed relaxed, no wrinkles creasing his eyes or face. He was a pleasantly good dancer, his steps small and controlled, his hand nice and warm across her back. He was leading completely, and she was just swaying along to his beat.

"You're a nice dancer," she said mildly, her hand resting on his shoulder.

"Years of practice," he replied, almost smiling. "A perk of being a pureblood child of high society."

Ginny laughed.

"This is surreal," she said, repeating her earlier thoughts out loud.

He exhaled out a laugh of agreement. "Perhaps."

"Twenty-seven years ago you were making me a key instrument in the opening of the Chamber of Secrets at Hogwarts. Now we are dancing in your sitting room." Ginny's tone and eyes had taken on a slightly flinty bent, but she wasn't particularly trying to start a fight.

Lucius looked down at her, opening his mouth to speak, and then closing it. For once, he appeared at a loss for words.

"Oh," he said flatly.

The song came to an end and she stood there, her hand still lightly in his. He seemed to be thinking about what to say. Ginny looked up at him.

He tilted his head down to meet her eyes properly. She could feel his pulse in the skin of his palm against her back. Even through her shirt, the heat was palpable, almost overwhelming—but Ginny refused to become overwhelmed, instead held her ground, shoving any questions aside in her mind.

His hand tightened on hers to an almost painful degree, as if he were preventing her from pulling away. In retribution, Ginny dug the strong tips of her fingers into the thick meat of his shoulders. His jaw tightened.

They were locked in an odd stalemate. Anyone coming across the two of them would think them to be some sort of romantic tableau, a two-headed statue. He could feel the cadence of her breaths from where their bodies were touching.

It was so very long ago—for him, at least. Twenty-seven years was a lifetime, and it felt even greater than just one lifetime because of the added weight of the war. It was trite of him to say that he had been a different person, and he wasn't even sure that he believed that, because he believed that people never truly changed.

When he released her, suddenly, she tumbled, and bumped against the couch, knocking her handbag off of the cushions and onto the floor.

"Fuck," she swore. The strange silence was broken and he had to hide a smile at her clumsiness and her dirty mouth.

"Let me help you," he said, and picked up her handbag for her, righting it, putting it back on the couch beside them. She was rubbing absentmindedly at her flank.

"Sorry. I didn't mean to try and start something," she said, and it was so casually apologetic that he believed it. He had, in fact, expected her to bring it up far earlier than this—how many weeks in? Five? Six? He couldn't remember.

"Well," he started, but she kept talking.

"It's not something I think about, really. I guess being back here brought it up."

"Did it?"

She was nodding and looking around. On any other person her behaviour would seem avoidant, but he was used to her frenetic energy and so he knew that she was already thinking about the next topic. If the subject had truly bothered her, she would have kept at it. Still—

"I'm sorry." He thought he would throw it out there to see if it was what she wanted.

She laughed at him.

He hadn't been expecting that. Despite its spur of the moment inception, his apology had actually—surprisingly—been genuine.

"Thank you," she said, smiling.

He didn't understand. As he opened his mouth to speak to her, he noticed something by his boot.

Ginny had turned around and was sorting through her handbag, making sure that everything was back in place. He spoke form behind her.

"What is this?" His voice was filtered in an odd way, a way she had never heard before.

She turned around. He was holding what looked like a newspaper clipping in his hand.

_Oh, god_.

Lucius had not been expecting to find a clipping of himself in her purse. He had picked up the piece of paper because it looked important, and had caught a glimpse of the picture, and it had been so devastatingly familiar that he had looked at it closer. And it was him—so serious, deep-eyed and stock-still. His heart had twisted in a strange way to see his younger self on the page.

He looked up at her and saw the expression on her face.

"Why—" He started to speak but cleared his throat. "Why do you have a photo of me in your purse?"

There was no revulsion or anger in his voice. Ginny wasn't surprised by that, as this Malfoy was excellent at concealing his true feelings. But the fact didn't make her feel any better.

"From the research I did before I met you," she replied, still stuck in place, half-mortified, and half-thrilled at the whole situation that was unfolding itself in front of them.

"What?"

"I went into the Prophet archives and did a searching spell to find all articles on you. I wanted to have my bases covered before I walked into your house." She said all of this without moving a muscle. She wasn't sure how he was going to react to her, and staying still seemed the best option. Like an animal versus animal.

"I see," he murmured, moving his thumb across the paper. "Why did you keep this one?"

Ginny didn't answer.

He tilted his head at her.

She sighed.

"I liked the way you looked."

He stared.

She shifted.

"I thought you looked—beautiful, really. I can't say that I thought you were untainted, even back then. Because even at that age, there was obviously an air of—of—something around you. Something wasn't right. But I liked the serious look on your face. And you appeared to be relatively untouched by Tom." Her face turned bright red. "All right?"

He didn't reply. He was looking at the photo in his hand.

When she cleared her throat, he jolted.

"I had forgotten that this photo had been taken."

"You used his name," Lucius said, looking at her.

"What?"

"Voldemort's name."

"Oh," Ginny said. She flushed. "Well, that is how I knew him."

Lucius was shocked. He knew that his shock was showing on his face, and tried to contain it as best as he could, but hearing her toss off the name was unbelievable to him. It made his respect for her increase, and also frightened him.

"Because of me," he said.

"Yes," she said, shaking her head back a little.

"I didn't—" He seemed to stop and reconsider his words, tilting his head towards himself as he thought furiously. "I didn't exactly know what I was giving you."

Ginny turned, and walked until she was a foot away from him.

"That is absolutely no excuse," she said, her hands in her pockets, her eyes firm. "That's like giving a child poison and then saying that you didn't know what was in the vial. It's irresponsible, cruel, and cowardly. You never even asked what Tom was giving you. You just handed it over to me. And I think you're lying. I think you had an inkling of what it was, but you just didn't give a shit."

They stared at each other for a moment.

"You're lucky that I'm a forgiving woman, Lucius. And that I've had years to come to terms with what happened to me in my first year at Hogwarts."

"What did he do?" The question came out of his mouth before he could stop it.

She opened her mouth and then closed it, and she looked at him with something in her eyes that was completely foreign to him—a strange brew of wisdom, sadness, terror, and excitement. He felt that if she spoke, he was going to hear something personal and dire and intriguing and cruel. He wasn't sure if he wanted her to speak, if he should have even asked the damn question. He felt like he was leaning forward towards her.

A noise split the air. It was a cross between a ringing and a bellowing, and Ginny jumped, dropping her pen on the ground.

"What the hell? What the hell?"

Lucius felt like screaming profanities to the vaulted ceilings. _Fuck_ would do quite nicely. She was throwing her head around, trying to find the source of the racket, and he couldn't believe it—he couldn't _believe_ his fucking luck. No, it wasn't luck. It was the worst thing. The most embarrassing thing that could happen. When she was here. The worst.

"Calm down, Ginevra."

"Aren't you worried?"

"No. It's my alarm."

"_Your_ alarm?" She was eyeing his body as if something on his person had set it off.

"The Manor's alarm."

She frowned. "You're going to have to do a lot better than that. Speaking four words to me at a time. Tell me—right now—what is going on. And make that fucking racket stop!"

He stopped it.

"When the Manor senses a threat—a legitimate threat—it shuts itself down for at least 24 hours. It becomes a sort of safe-house." He looked perturbed.

"What are you saying?" Ginny controlled her voice, made sure it wasn't shrill.

"That we're going to be unable to leave the Manor for that amount of time."

"_What_?"

"After the second war, I found that my family was getting more—threats—than before," Lucius said, tone hesitant. "I installed new wards that were intelligent, and could learn to assess the threat to discern if the level of danger was high enough to risk turning the Manor into a safe-house."

"You mean there's someone dangerous out there? Out in your yard?" She tried not to panic.

Lucius shook his head. " No. If there is, they are only at the gates. They cannot get past. And even if they did get past the gates, they could not get into the Manor. The doors have been warded shut. We cannot even get out into the garden."

She would have accused him of orchestrating this for some dramatic or perverted effect, but there was too much embarrassment and anger in his eyes for this to be game of make-believe.

"The wards are dramatic, I know, but honestly Ginevra, the threats became so malicious and so measured after we were acquitted—I had to do something, and this seemed right. I didn't mean for you to be caught in this. I am not often targeted during the day."

"_Often_?"

He realised his mistake, then.

"Are you targeted often?" She stared at him.

"Enough," he answered noncommittally.

"So someone just throwing a Stinging Hex at your wards—"

"Would not be enough to trigger the lock-down. It's something serious enough, but until the Aurors get here, we will not know."

"_Aurors_?"

Lucius grimaced. "I linked my system to automatically notify the Auror Department when the Manor goes into lock-down. Technically, they're supposed to come right away to assess the threat and deal with it."

"_But_?"

"But the last time they came immediately was when Draco was twenty."

"Holy Christ," Ginny swore. "Are you telling the truth?"

"Yes," Lucius murmured, ambling away from her and looking outside.

"So the Aurors just let you wait?"

"It's usually no more than a day."

"Well, why don't you call them?" Ginny couldn't believe what she was hearing.

"They never respond to my Floo calls."

"_What_?"

"They never respond to my Floo calls," he repeated, his voice raising. "There. Is that what you wanted me to say? That I can't even get a damn Auror to my house? Not even if I were having a heart attack, dying?" He broke off, glaring at her. "They will come eventually. _Eventually_."

Ginny thought for a moment. "What if I sent an owl to—"

"_Potter_? No. I won't permit you to use the owlery."

"Lucius, that is insane." She was irked with him. "I could explain what I was doing here, and I know that Harry would get the house out of lockdown far faster than the usual way."

"_No_." The word was roared at her. Ginny was actually struck speechless at his vitriol. He breathed heavily for a moment. "I apologize. I shouldn't have shouted at you. But I do not want Potter to feel _pity_ for me. I do not want your name to be dragged through the mud of the gossip magazines for being discovered here. I do not want the Auror office laughing at me for hiding behind a woman's skirt. Please understand that." He had turned away from her, his jaw tight.

Ginny considered it for a moment. Nobody was expecting her home. She could theoretically spend the night in the Manor and no one would notice. And there was something desperate and genuine to the way Lucius was speaking to her. She realised that it was a leftover from his Pureblood society, that he had to assert his masculinity in one way or another. She could let him have this one small victory.

"_Fine_."

"Pardon me?"

"I said _fine_. Do you have a guest room for me?"

Lucius looked back at her, his face incredulous. "Of course I have a guest room." This was said slightly more haughtily.

"Well, then. Show me to it," she said.

"The elves can—"

"No," she said firmly, clearly. "You show me to the guest room. You can do it. It's your house. It's your manor."

Lucius looked at her, and then nodded, his expression unreadable.

* * *

><p>Ginny lay on the bed, exhausted.<p>

Here she was. In a bedroom. In Malfoy Manor.

That was a shock to the system.

She held the pillow over her face and laughed into it because she wasn't sure if any of the bedposts of the mirrors were charmed with ears and she didn't want anything or anyone to hear her laughing like a loon to herself.

It was a nicely decorated room. She was surprised at that. It was done up in shades of warm gold and brown, and the bedposts weren't carved with images of devils and snakes as she might have expected. The carpet was thick and lovely under her feet, and Lucius had mumbled about extra robes in the armoire before he walked out, looking distracted, saying something about his ledgers and meeting her in the dining room at eight o'clock. She suspected that he was avoiding her because he didn't deem it appropriate to be in the same room with her—some odd vestige of pureblood what-have-you—or that he was embarrassed about the whole debacle. No matter. She would get it out of him at dinner.

What she was getting was a distinct look into Lucius' personal life. Being in a sitting room in the manor was one thing. Being in a bedroom was another thing. And really, it was kind of hilarious. What a fucking situation.

She wanted to get up. She wanted to look around. But she fell asleep. She must have, because all of a sudden there was a knocking at the door and the room was darker and she felt cotton-mouthed and dozy.

"What?"

The knocking continued.

"Come in," she hollered, deciding not to get up from the bed until it was absolutely necessary. Surreptitiously, she looked at the coverlet under her head to make sure that she hadn't drooled anywhere. How unbecoming.

The door opened and Lucius stood in the doorway.

"Ginevra."

"Yes?" She propped her head up on one hand. "Why are you standing in the doorway like that? Come inside if you want."

"That's not appropriate," Lucius replied.

"Don't be ridiculous," she said. "We're grown-ups, not teenagers. Your society is so bizarre."

He gritted his teeth and then stepped into the room, coming to the foot of the bed. Seeing her lying back on the duvet, her body splayed, made him both uncomfortable and greatly aware of his male gender. She was fully clothed and yet seeing her on a bed that he owned was so suggestive.

"What do you want for supper?"

Ginny sat upright, her hair falling around her face.

"Are you _cooking_ it?"

"No," he replied. "I was going to get the house-elves to prepare it simply because of time constraints." He stopped, and looked at her. "I _can_ cook, you know."

"No, I didn't know." She smiled. He had sounded defensive.

"I've taught myself, in these past years."

"Really?"

Her gob smacked tone riled him. "Yes, _really_. Sometimes one needs something to do. When one is all _alone_." He stopped and inhaled. "Since there are only two of us, I suggest that we eat either in the study or directly in the kitchen. The formal dining room can be a bit oppressive."

"Oh. Well. All right—the study sounds fine. But I'm afraid that I'll spill something on the floor and get in trouble."

"Probably," he said, and she sensed that he was being serious.

"I didn't think that you could cook," she said, laughing.

He tossed his head in irritation.

"Just—oh, I'll come get you in an hour," he snapped.

* * *

><p>"This is really good," Ginny said.<p>

"Thank you," was the reply, although she sensed that what he had really wanted to say was "I know."

"Good fire," she said, her voice calm and low.

He made a sound of assent, and she craned her head up to look at him.

They had eaten at the low table in the study, and it had been amiable. They hadn't spoken much before or during the meal, but directly afterward he had poured them both a glass of sherry, and Ginny had taken the liberty of stretching out on the couch. He was sitting in a wingback chair, just slightly out of her range of sight, and he had taken his shoes off, which amused her greatly. Seeing Lucius Malfoy in stocking feet was so odd. He had undone the top button of his shirt, and had let his hair out of its binding, the mass of white and silver pulled over one shoulder, the tips curling in the centre of his chest. There was a smoothness to his face that pleased her. As she watched, he took a long sip of his sherry, and then turned his head slightly to meet her gaze, pursing his lips at her.

"Staring is rude."

Ginny grinned. "I know." She turned back to the fire, smiling still, so pleased with the warmth on her legs. "I like your socks."

"Don't be pert," he replied, so automatically that she laughed out loud.

"I can't believe I'm lying on your goddamn sofa, watching a fire."

There was a silence from behind her. Then—

"I know."

He wanted to say _odd, isn't it_ but he was afraid that if he opened his mouth to say more, something he didn't want would come out. The days on which she was in his house were the days that he looked forward to, and the thought of that was distressing him. Even now, having her in his study, in front of his fire, he didn't feel uncomfortable. The silence was not uncomfortable. Instead, he only just felt calm.

She stood, arched her back, made a noise of content.

"I'm tired. I'm going to fall asleep here if I don't go upstairs."

"Can you find your way?"

"I think so."

"Good-night, then." That was all he could say. He couldn't even bring himself to rise up out of the chair, because he felt that it would be too much. She didn't care, it seemed. She only grinned and thanked him for dinner, and made a movement to clean the plates from the table, which he halted brusquely, and then she left the room, disappearing from the orange glow they had created, fading immediately into the dark of the Manor.

He sat back in his chair. Sipped his drink. Hoped that she didn't get lost in the Manor, although a part of him knew, inherently, that the house liked her too much to let that happen, that nothing ghastly would come out of the darkness at her, that the portraits weren't going to be too rude. Part of him then hoped that she would get lost. That he could come and find her. Maybe take her to his bedroom. Sling those legs open and feel them clench around his hips. Find the vitality in himself again. Feel like that boy in the photo.

He stopped those thoughts immediately, horrified.

He was starting to like Ginevra Weasley.


	7. Chapter 7

**Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is what you've all been waiting for. **

**(!)**

* * *

><p>He leaned forward across the footstool and played his hand.<p>

"Goddammit," she barked.

"Ha." He was not quite triumphant, but smug enough to make her want to gnash her teeth.

"That's two games you've won. Are you cheating?"

"Why would you first jump to that conclusion?" Lucius reshuffled the deck.

She exhaled through her lips. It was almost a derisive sound.

Lucius didn't laugh, but wanted to.

"You look well-rested."

She was well rested. She had wandered down to the main foyer at just past nine in the morning, and a house-elf had directed her to the dining room where still-warm food was waiting for her, and after she had crammed a piece of toast into her mouth, followed by about a pound of bacon, she had swilled a cup of tea and had wandered again. This time, she had ended up in the library, where Lucius had been writing.

_Writing_?

"Working, actually."

_Oh_.

"Investments."

_I will not ask_.

"Probably best."

She had almost seen a smile from him, then. She liked to see his teeth, and he so rarely showed them.

So she had plunked herself down and within a few minutes she had coaxed him into leaning over a footstool and playing a game of cards.

"I am well-rested. That bed was divine."

He knew it. He had put her in one of the best guest rooms they had, but he would never tell her that. And he had asked the kitchen to make an extremely good breakfast. He would never tell her that either. Judging from the trail of crumbs—pastry destruction—from the dining room to the library, she had enjoyed that. Immensely.

"I was surprised at how well I slept, to be honest."

"Being in the devil's den?"

"Something like that," she said.

His smile was wry. "I know."

There was a lot that was being unsaid. They both left it as was.

And that was when—

"Father?"

The door of the library banged open in a manner so like Draco that Ginny didn't even need to turn—or hear _father_—to know that it was him.

"Father! _Fath_—Christ, Weasley, you scared m—_Weasley_?" Draco's voice had changed from normal to completely perplexed in a manner of seconds, and Ginny laughed out loud at the comical nature of it.

From where Draco had entered the library, he had only been able to see her. Not his father.

He rounded the corner, staring at the two of them with an incredulous face.

"What the _hell_ is going on here? Father, why was the Manor locked down? Did you call the Aurors?"

"Calm yourself, Draco." Lucius didn't look up from his hand. "I never call the Aurors."

"I told you that you had to start doing that," Draco said, almost angrily.

"They never come."

"Well, that's beside the point, Fath—what the _hell_ is Weasley doing here? What are you doing here, Weasley?" He turned to look at her, frowning.

Ginny was watching Draco with a half-formed smile on her open mouth. Lucius was blinking heavily as though he couldn't follow his son's rapid-fire questioning.

"I'm sleeping with your father."

Draco's face went white, then purple. Ginny watched, her smile getting larger, as he opened and closed his mouth. Lucius shifted.

"Christ, Malfoy. I'm just joking. I was interviewing him for the paper, you _prat_, and the wards went off, so I spent the night in the guest room. You're just as easy to ruffle as you were all throughout university," she said, laughing, putting her cards down and rising and coming to stand in front of Draco. "How the hell are you, anyway? I haven't seen you in months."

Draco blinked once, twice, and his face returned to the same colour it had been before. Then he smiled back at her, looking a little dazed, and moved to embrace her firmly. Lucius was still silent behind them. When he pulled back, Draco pinched her cheek.

"_Ouch_. You know I hate that," she groused, shoving his hand away. "How's Asteria?"

"She's good. Scorpius is making us tear our hair out, though. That age. You know."

Ginny grunted an assent. "Oh, yes. Albus is the same, now."

"That's right," Draco said. "The child with the two worst names in the history of child-naming."

"Harry wanted those names," she said, laughing. "I didn't pick them. I like what they stand for, but not the names themselves."

"Bloody awful," Draco murmured.

The two of them had always had an interesting connection. If she didn't know better, Ginny would have called it flirtatious. In fact, they had shared that kiss when they had been younger—she fourteen, he fifteen, pressing against each other in a frenzy. She had left him, laughing in his face, when she had felt his erection pressing into her abdomen. Secretly, though—years later—she thought about fucking him. It would have been good between the two of them, but it wouldn't have lasted. But then he got engaged, and she had always had Harry.

"How's Potter?" The question was asked grudgingly.

"Er—fine." It was just easier to answer that way. Thankfully, Draco didn't seem to notice the hesitation in her voice.

"Fucking wanker," he retorted. Ginny rolled her eyes.

"Charming as ever, Malfoy."

"Sure, sure," he said distractedly.

Ginny turned over her shoulder to look at Lucius, as if to roll her eyes again at him, but she was surprised by the look that was momentarily on his face. His eyes were narrowed, his brows creased, and there was a tightness to his mouth. When he saw her looking, the expression slid off of his face as though it had been butter, but Ginny had seen it.

It had looked like jealousy.

Draco brushed past her to get to his father, the back of his hand grazing her buttocks as he did so. He had always been like—totally unaware of other people's space. Ginny frowned at Lucius and then faded back into the bookcases, letting Lucius talk to his son.

* * *

><p>Draco left after punching Ginny in the shoulder—a muted <em>ouch<em> from her end—and after briskly embracing his father in that odd man-hug with the strange back-clapping. Ginny wanted to roll her eyes at the simian maleness of it, but at least they were touching each other. She never really pegged the Malfoys as a physical family, and so it was nice to see.

She thought perhaps that they might go back to their card game.

She was wrong.

Lucius was standing beside the footstool, and he had an odd, sour look on his face. She felt as though some whip-crack of thunder was about to happen. The air was thicker.

"What?"

"Have you ever had sex with my son?"

She had been expecting the question, on some level, so she didn't balk at it. It was so incredibly blunt, so typical of what she had come to expect from him, that she only sighed.

"No."

"I don't believe you," he replied, peevishly.

"Well, I haven't. Not that it's any of your business if I had."

"It's my bloody business. He's my son."

"Your _grown_ son. I'm almost forty, Lucius." Ginny frowned at him. "I'm not a teenager who can be reprimanded anymore. Don't be idiotic. I snogged him once when I was fourteen."

"I knew it."

"That's not _fucking_," she said, barking out a laugh.

"You kissed my son," he repeated.

"When I was barely pubescent," she replied.

"That's perverted."

"No, _you're_ perverted for questioning me about this! Do you want to picture your fifteen-year-old son kissing a fourteen-year-old girl? Don't be vile, Lucius." She frowned at him. "Why does it matter to you?"

"It doesn't." His voice was tight.

"Obviously it does. Don't lie."

"It doesn't," he repeated, turning away from her."

"Tell me," she said, her voice raised.

"It _doesn't_," he yelled at her, turning around to face her.

He watched her face change a thousand times over. In a simple moment, she went from taken aback to a brief second of scared, and then her face settled into a mask that he knew well—rage. Indignation. A tempered anger that he knew she could wield expertly. He had seen Weasley rage on so many levels from so many people. At least she would fight him. In a sick way, he wanted it. He wasn't sure why he was provoking her, but something within him had reared, and so he reverted, becoming something what he was like when he had been younger—following his basest emotions.

"No wonder your wife left you and Draco has moved away. You're a _blight_," she said, her voice rising to a full yell on the last few words. It was so rare for her to lose her temper as such, but if anyone deserved it, it was Lucius Malfoy.

She half-expected him to cast an Unforgivable on her, his expression was so fucking _furious_. Ginny hadn't seen that face in a very long time—not since she had been fourteen and he had been running after her in the Department of Mysteries, and even then, his eyes had been partially occluded by the dark, the mask, his hair. Now, he was facing her straight on, and his pupils were completely dilated in pure rage.

The result was absolutely awesome—was stunning. Ginny was rendered momentarily speechless because she could swear that she could see electricity snapping from the white ends of his hair, that she could see static surrounding his head like some sort of deviant halo.

He looked phenomenal and terrifying.

"Apologise." He spoke only one word, and his voice was controlled and low, but there was such undiluted anger behind it that Ginny shivered visibly. This was what Lucius Malfoy was like as a Death Eater—she knew it, could feel the waves of his control and his rage radiating from him as though he were the sun.

"No," Ginny barked.

He stepped forward and grabbed her by the shoulders so hard that the next morning she would look at her skin and see long-fingered bruises in clouds of purple and red.

"_Apologise_," Lucius hissed at her, some of his spittle flying onto her face.

"_No_," Ginny hissed back, just as angrily. He looked livid. She _was_ livid. She ostentatiously wiped the back of her hand across her face, glaring at him. "I am _not_ apologising to you, you fucking _ponce_."

Lucius shook her once, very hard. "I hate it when you slight me!"

"Then you know how I felt for all those years," Ginny yelled back into his face.

"Good lord, Mrs. Potter." His demeanour changed like quicksilver—he became smug and smarmy. "You're sounding a bit uptight, really. No need to yell. It _does_ sound like you need to get fucked."

Ginny Weasley wrenched her arms from his loosened grip, reared back, and slapped Lucius Malfoy's face as hard as she could.

It was only a few seconds of a pause—after she did it—just a quick pause, faster than a breath. But Ginny thought that she would remember the way he looked, in that one moment, for the rest of her life. His eyes were on fire, widened and yet narrowed at the same time, the whites showing, and her long-fingered handprint was tattooed onto his left cheek, stark white and then flushing red as the blood rushed back into his face. Lucius' nostrils flared—once, twice—and then he _smiled_.

The smile terrified her.

Her right hand ringing, tingling, trilling, she inhaled once—deeply and harshly—and then she went into action. Ginny put her long-limbed strength into use, pushing off of him, relishing the breathless sound he made as she connected with his stomach, moved away from him, and—

Ginny ran.

She exploded out of the room, hearing the mahogany door crack satisfying against the wall as it flung open. Ginny hoped that she cracked it, that she damaged it. And then she was off, flying down the carpeted corridors of the Manor. She hadn't run like this since she was a small child, and even in her anger, there was still something exhilarating in whipping face-first down the hallways of Malfoy Manor.

Until she realised that Lucius Malfoy was running behind her.

She only looked back once, and her breath caught. Lucius was sprinting, his long limbs a threat to hers, his legs long and horse-like and tensely muscled, moving. His hair had half-come out of his hair tie, and it was flying around his head in a mock halo. When he noticed her looking he snapped his teeth at her in that one split second, and she saw saliva fly from his mouth, an animalistic thing. He looked like an archangel and yet so like Lucifer that Ginny whipped her head back and tried to run faster.

She thought she would be faster than him. She was younger, had played sports, had to run after her children throughout their entire lives, still had the muscle memory of riding a broom imprinted into her bones. And maybe, on even ground, in a place that Lucius Malfoy didn't know like the back of his hand, like the veins of his cock, like an extra limb, she would have been. But she slowed around the corners, not knowing if she was going to run into a family ghost, a remnant of a Death Eater past, a prisoner, a priceless artifact.

And so, when she came to her fourth turn, and when she began to run down a corridor that she had, just as the others, never seen before, Lucius fiercely sped up.

His arms clamped around her waist, and he pulled back on her body so sharply that her stomach leapt into her throat, and she was afraid, for an irrational moment, that she was going to vomit all over his beautiful runner rugs. Then she realised what was happening, and Ginny fought. She screamed as loud as she could, trying to get as close to his ear as possible, trying to burst his damn eardrums.

He began dragging her backwards, and she kicked her legs, thrashing powerfully in his arms, and when she began to twist her body, she felt his arms loosen for a brief moment, and she nearly choked on her own tongue in elation until his forearms tightened around her middle again. Ginny bent her head, trying to bite the skin of his arms, his hands. She yelled obscenities at him, trying to stomp on his feet with her heeled boots. She tried to knock at his knees with her own knees, her toes.

She tried to elbow him in the stomach, and he grabbed her moving arms as hard as he could, trapping first one and then the other in his circled grip around her waist.

When he had both her arms in his iron hold, Ginny screamed in frustration. She was still facing away from him, her back pressed tight to his front, and she hadn't yet seen his face throughout the entire exchange. She took immense pleasure, however, in the fact that he was panting just as heavily as she was, each of his fast, rasping breaths hot against the nape of her neck.

She wasn't still. Even as he began stepping backwards, she was thrashing back and forth in his arms, trying to butt back against him with her lower back, her buttocks.

The fact that he wasn't speaking—wasn't making any sound except for his breathing—was scaring her, but she wasn't giving up. She turned her head, tried to bite at his chin and jaw, snapping her teeth at him just as he had snapped his teeth at her. She spat at him, and when she did so, he shook her briefly and violently, as if to wordlessly discourage her.

Lucius had backed up to a door, and he had to loosen an arm to use the doorknob. Ginny sensed the change in his body, and waited until he had un-looped an arm from around her waist. The moment he did so, she bucked so hard that she came half-free from his grasp just as the door swung open. The momentum of the movement brought her falling to the ground and brought him down to one knee, a startled and deep sound escaping his chest.

Ginny was on her hands and knees in Malfoy Manor, and she began trying to crawl away, scrabbling to get up to her feet.

Lucius made a snarling sound from behind her, and she knew he had grabbed her ankle with both hands before she even felt it. She knew it would happen even as she had tried to escape from him.

She made a preternatural shriek, and he yanked so sharply that she fell properly to her hands and her knees. He was a foot into the room, and she dug her fingers into the plush material of the rug as he began to pull on her ankle. Ginny kicked with the other leg, but he caught it after she had landed a few sharp kicks to his torso, and he heaved her calves up under his biceps, trapping them to the sides of his body.

Lucius was up on both knees, and Ginny was now down on her forearms, her fingertips still dug into the carpet—as if that would help her.

He only had to pull twice, and she was dragged back into the room, the door swinging shut as soon as she was inside, right in front of her face.

* * *

><p>As soon as the door shut, Lucius lunged up from his sitting position on both knees, and Ginny yelled out, once, as she was suddenly trapped beneath a body broader and stronger and angrier than hers.<p>

Lucius was straddling her midsection, his hands clamping down on her outstretched wrists. Ginny tried to buck her body up to dislodge him but he was too strong, too heavy for her.

"Christ, you fight a good fight." Lucius' voice was just the slightest bit amazed, and breathless, and deep.

"Let go of me, you perverted old man," Ginny yelled.

Lucius laughed, then, the harshness of his chuckle amplified by the hoarseness of his breathing. Ginny yelled out again, wordlessly, and thrashed below him. Her chin was digging into the carpet pile.

Lucius lowered his chest to her back, widening his legs, pressing his body against hers, and the next time Ginny moved, flailing, she felt that—

"Oh, you fucking _pervert_," she yelled, face-forward. "You're _hard_. You're hard, you're hard, you're hard!" She twisted her face. "You're in your sixties. How is that even possible? Hasn't it fallen off by now?"

He _was_ hard. His erection was pressing into her rear end, and Ginny gritted her teeth at the feel of it, because it was thick and long, and slotted between her buttocks as he lay pressed against her.

When he spoke, he was so much closer than she had anticipated. His fingers were tight around her wrists, his breath wet on her ear. "And you're not?"

Ginny barely had time to understand what he said before he moved, rearing back, sitting on her lower back, his calves on either side of her buttocks. He let go of her wrists, one of his hands wound into her hair, the other in front of her. He pulled back sharply on her hair, on her head, and Ginny made a strangled sound as he forced her spine up into a curve. His other hand came up to grab her left breast, and Ginny's mouth dropped open.

She hadn't thought that he would go so far.

Her nipples were sharply hard. She clenched her jaw, refusing to acknowledge her body's arousal. Ginny waited for the gloating to come.

It didn't.

Lucius said nothing, but his breathing increased as his hand cupped her full breast aggressively, kneading at the flesh, his fingers pinching sharply at her nipple. Ginny stifled a cry.

She still hadn't seen his face. He hadn't allowed her to turn around yet, her head fixed in place by his hand.

He released her abruptly, and she fell face-forward at the surprise of it. He had moved off of her, but she didn't try to run. He had shoved his hands underneath her body, adroitly opening the buttons of her trousers, and now he was yanking them off of her, pulling her boots off, throwing her clothing to the side.

Ginny looked stalwartly ahead, moving forward slightly on her forearms.

"No," he said, his hand coming back to twist in her hair. "No. You're not going anywhere." Lucius moved back to lie on top of her, and the tweed of his trousers pressed into the smoothed skin of her buttocks, only her underpants separating them because—

She realised that he had released the stays of his own trousers, and that they had slipped down enough to let his cock free, because the heat of it was pressing into her buttocks. Her hips moved up to his like a fucking magnet.

"I want to fuck you." His words were hissed into her ear, and Ginny moaned, low, for the first time since they had started. "I'm _going_ to fuck you."

She said nothing, but when he started to ease up off of her body, she moved back with him, coming up onto her hands and knees, still staring stoically ahead at the mahogany door. It was an action of partial submission and partial agreement, and there was a snarled sound from behind her, and then he was bent over her back like a heated curve, a parenthesis, and two large hands were palming across her breasts, his breath along the nape of her neck, her hairline, as though they were two animals rutting. He paused for a moment, his fingers sliding between the buttons of her shirt, and then he moved suddenly, tearing her shirt from her body.

She didn't even flinch.

Lucius didn't even take the time to unclasp her bra, instead tugging it down, off of her breasts, and his hot palms were across her nipples. He made a grunt of pleasure behind her, his forehead touching between her shoulder blades for a brief moment, and then he released her chest, and she could hear him shrugging out of his own shirt.

That was the moment that Ginny chose to look back at him, peering out of the corner of her eye.

Lucius was staring at her, his eyes wild, his mouth damp and open. He was wearing only his trousers, and they were partially down his thighs, his erect cock exposed. She could smell him—salty and sweaty—and then Ginny looked back, her head straightening, her gaze ahead. The whole exchange of glances took a few seconds, a breath-worth of time.

His hands were at her bottom immediately, and he tore her underpants off with such a practiced and violent twist of his wrist that she nearly had second thoughts. Lucius inhaled deeply, and Ginny could feel how wet she truly was. She could almost hear him smiling but only for a second because then the head of his cock was pushing into her, and he surged his hips forward, forcing his way completely inside of her body.

She gasped for a moment. It had been so long since she had had sex, and he was so large, that the pain was clear and twinging, ringing between her legs. He was so thick, so broad, and it felt as though he were breaking her apart.

But she relished it.

Ginny snarled wordlessly, and pushed back against him as hard as she could, forcing him to bottom out, forcing the weight of his scrotum against her labia, and Lucius didn't quite moan but made a sound that was so close, so close, and so Ginny laughed out loud.

He didn't reply but one of his hands grabbed her hair so roughly and so cruelly that she cried out, his fingers twisting into the red, pressing into her scalp, and then he began to ride her, his back arched, curled, as he bent over her body, his teeth sinking into her shoulders, one of his arms looped around her lower belly.

Ginny's barks of pleasure were in time with his ricocheting thrusts. She could feel the skin on her knees melting, burning with the carpet, and she dug her palms in, feeling the skin on the heels of her hands rasping along with the metronome of his hips.

Lucius was breathing heavily behind her, and she could hear the moist slap of his testicles against her, of his thighs against her buttocks, and the sharpness of his incisors pressing into the skin of her back. She raised her bottom, arching her spine, and he adjusted with her, knowing what she was looking for, moving along with her, the thickness of him partially burning, partially stinging her as he stretched her with his violent rhythm. She arched her sacral spine in first one direction, and then the other, and then she froze, yelling as the head of his cock finally was in the right place, pressing perfectly into her muscular walls, and Lucius grunted again, his hand tight in her hair, tighter around her stomach.

They _were_ rutting. Ginny forgot about the softness of her thighs, about her unshaven legs, about her frustration with her article, and concentrated instead on cataloguing the cacophony of sounds that she and Lucius were making. She was surprised that the elves hadn't come running. The symphony of their grunts was rattling off of the high ceiling corners of the sitting room they were in, the groans crawling along the carpeted floor, slinking out underneath the door, into the hallway. One of the windows was partially open, and she wondered if there was anyone in the garden, and if they could hear the beat of their flesh.

Ginny growled as Lucius sped up his pace, unholy sounds—almost like barks, almost undulating baying—coming out of his mouth. She came suddenly around his length, her thighs shaking as she roared out, her body snapping with intense pleasure, her thighs wet.

Lucius pulled out of her suddenly, his hands slapping down on either side of her thighs. He pressed her legs together, sliding his wet cock between her tight inner thighs, the length of it rubbing along her raw clitoris, the head coming out between the seam of her thighs, just beneath the triangle of her crotch. Ginny straightened up, standing up onto her knees, and he wrapped his arms around her chest, making her breasts jut out between his forearms, pulling her body back so that his chest was to her back again. His arms were everywhere, clasping her chest to him, wrapped around her stomach, hands sliding up and down her legs. His hair was sticking to her cheeks, her neck, the sweat rolling down between her shoulder blades, lubricating his chest, making their bodies come together with a deep, sticky sound.

He was fucking her between the thighs, his cock sliding in between her tightly closed legs, his progress aided by her own come, which had dripped down her legs, and all of a sudden his hands came to the middle of her thighs, and he thrust forward once, twice, three times, and Ginny looked down, could see the streams of white semen roping out from the swollen head of his cock, some of it landing on her legs, most on the carpet.

Lucius roared behind her, his head thrown back, and Ginny darted a look behind her, seeing only the tensed length of his neck, painted completely wet with sweat, the harsh lines of his chin. His head was tilted all the way back, his hands still gripping at the flesh of her thighs, his cock softening between her legs.

His head rose, and Ginny didn't look away. She swayed slightly, and Lucius dropped his buttocks back to his heels, keeping his eyes locked to hers, and her body came with him, her own buttocks resting back on his hard thighs.

Her chin was resting on her own shoulder, and she was staring at him. His cock was still between her thighs, his come sticky on her skin, and then Ginny raised her arm, wound a strong hand into the hair at the base of his neck, and she kissed him—scorching, sloppily, at an awkward and wet angle—tasting him, roughly shoving her tongue into his mouth, making him accept it. Lucius' palms came up to either side of her face, and he kissed her back just as bluntly.

When she pulled away from him, he stared at her mouth, and then her eyes, and then over her shoulder at the come all over the carpet.

"Look at that," he murmured thoughtfully.

Ginny followed his gaze. "There's quite a lot," she said, and then she smiled crookedly at the oddness of her statement.

"Thank you," he said absentmindedly, patting a palm against her flank.

Ginny was amazed at how mild they were being to each other in their post-coital haze.

She was the first to move, standing creakily, letting his cock fall out from between her legs. She stood, stretching up and over, hearing her back crack satisfyingly.

Lucius stood. He was close to her—so close that if she jutted her chin out she could touch the skin of his chest. She could feel the softness of his pubic hair against her lower abdomen, and Ginny shuddered slightly.

He didn't kiss her. She didn't say anything. He merely stood, watching aloofly down his nose at her, and she pulled her hair back from where it was stuck to her shoulders, and then stepped around him, grabbing her clothes and pulling what pieces she could find whole and un-marred back onto her body.

"I'll be back next week, Mr. Malfoy. To start the next portion of the interview."

He didn't gape, but his eyes widened slightly at the use of his formal name. Ginny hid a smile, pleased that she had startled him by reverting to formality and professionalism, pleased that her handprint was still blazing across his face, pleased that her clitoris sang with each step she took out of the Manor.

* * *

><p>Ginny had to pick up her children from Harry's flat at 5 o'clock that afternoon. James was grumbling in the foyer, angry at his mum for being so <em>late<em>—Ginny was only seven minutes behind time, and only because she had had to mend her shirt before leaving the Manor—and Albus was sitting and reading a book. Lily was talking animatedly with Harry.

"Sorry, sorry, sorry I'm a little late," Ginny mumbled as she blew into the apartment, grabbing Lily's travelling cloak off of the peg by Harry's front door.

Harry stood up properly and nodded at her, ushering Lily forward.

"Hi, lovey," Ginny said, kissing Lily on the cheek. Lily, in turn, rolled her eyes and wiped her cheek with the back of her hand, but took the offered cloak, and let Ginny help her into it. James was practically dancing around her in his anxiety to get back to Ginny's house, and Albus was eyeing her in a very disconcerting way.

Harry was watching her. She saw his nostrils flare slightly, and she wondered if he could smell Lucius on her, across her body, between her legs. She probably smelled different—like salt and lime and spunk and musk and saline arousal. Ginny shivered a little at the remembrance of Lucius Malfoy's thick cock rammed inside of her as he rode her into his carpeted floor.

She tugged down on the cuffs of her shirt, trying to make sure that all of the carpet burn was covered. She hadn't thought to superficially disguise it before she had come.

"You look—lively." Harry's voice was flat and questioning.

Ginny raised her eyebrows at him. She wondered if he was jealous, angry that she wasn't moping around her house on the days she had off from the children, pining over him. "I had a good day today." Her answer was tart and matter-of-fact. Her children were watching the exchange curiously.

"Working for Lucifer Malfoy?"

Ginny's eyebrows went higher. "That's not the _nicest_ name, Harry. Especially because Albus is somewhat acquainted with his grandson." Albus exhaled softly behind her. She hated when Harry made any sort of disparaging comment about the Malfoys, as tolerant as he was sometimes, because she knew that her middle son was on friendlier terms with Scorpius than Harry had ever been with Draco. "Yes, it was a good day for my article today. But James seems to be eager to go home—" here Ginny looked at her eldest son "—probably to Floo-call his girlfriend." James had the decency to turn red. "All right, out the door with you. All of you." Ginny hustled them out the door, and turned to leave herself, but Harry closed the door softly behind his children and stood near to her body. He looked at her thoughtfully, inhaling deeply.

"You smell different," he said.

Ginny was good at lying, and was good at keeping her face immobile and blush-free, even in stressful situations.

"That's interesting," she said, and reached behind her, turning the doorknob. "We'll see you in three days, Harry." She slipped out.

* * *

><p>She felt alive. That was the main thing that she realised when she was taking a shower later on, after the children had been bundled off to their respective rooms. Her hands had strayed between her legs, tracing between her labia, and when she had washed herself, she had winced. He had cleaved her open—it felt irrevocable, irreversible. When she had wiped after going to the bathroom, there had been light pink on the tissue—diluted blood. She was bruised on the inside. But for the next six days, she was in a constant state of arousal, always wet.<p> 


	8. Chapter 8

**I'm still alive. I think about this story every day. I'm taking a long time on this one, but it's for you all, because the more I think about the characters, the more I think that I will be better able to portray/manipulate/work with them. Bring them to life for you. Stay tuned, of course. You are all lovely.**

* * *

><p>She wasn't sure how she was going to handle this one. <em>Great job, Ginevra<em>. Sleeping with an interview subject hardly seemed professional, and if word got out that that was what she had done in order to score her story, she was going to be eviscerated, Amorin too. Poor Amorin. And then she got nervous, worried that Lucius Malfoy had somehow tricked her into the whole thing, and that he was planning to use it as blackmail should she write an unsatisfactory article about him. _Fuck, fuck, fuck_. Oh, you bloody idiot.

Still—

She spent the next week in an odd haze. A red wine-fueled haze. A masturbatory haze. A buzzing, trilling, honey-thick haze. She knew that it was the endorphins that were making her so odd. That her brain was attaching itself to him even as she spent her week sitting at her desk chair, writing out her article, chatting with her children. Seven days. Seven days in which she reached her hands between her legs and touched herself on the strike of every hour, having to duck into the bathroom at work in order to be able to make it through the work-day. Seven days in which she remembered what he looked like with his hair—long, silver, thick and male—falling out of its tie, sticking to his gnarled, wide shoulders. In which she remembered the feeling of his hands mauling her breasts, the huge palms covering her chest completely. The sink of his teeth into the back meat of her neck. And as the days led up to their next meeting—as each night passed and she dreamed about odd things—she got more and more—what? Nervous? Excited? Something.

* * *

><p>He had seen her in his sleep, or something like that. And the times that he had wanted to send her an owl—to say <em>come over and let me fuck you into the floor again<em>. But he hadn't. There had still been a modicum of pride left somewhere in the cage of his old bones, and he had clung to it. And clung to himself. Jerked himself stupid in the confines of his shower. He had always had a libido. But he had assumed that that same libido was going to diminish as he got older. Being a sexagenarian had thrown him for a loop, for a while there, and he had thought that he was going to become less of himself—Clearly not. Because whenever he thought about her—curving her spine up underneath him to meet the sweaty bracket of his own body, the tangled mass of her red hair against his nose, the smell of her pussy spread across his groin, the way she had come, unassuming and without theatrics, around his cock—he became insufferably, cruelly hard.

So when she showed up for their next meeting, he had to sit down the minute he saw her because he was afraid that all of the blood leaving his brain was going to make him faint. Luckily, he could slide behind his desk and hide his lap that way.

* * *

><p>She bumbled into the library in such a way that it looked as though they hadn't ever fucked—there was nothing overtly awkward in the way she moved. Her hair was half-falling out of its braid.<p>

"Christ, you look like shit."

"Oh, thank you," she replied, rolling her eyes.

"Why?"

"Problems with James." She set her notebook down on the couch. "That little bugger." This second sentiment was muttered under her breath. He watched as she pulled her hair back again, loosening it from its original braid and re-plaiting it. Her shirt was undone just enough that he could see the full top curves of her breasts when she bent over. And when she straightened up, her nipples were pulled taut, brought into full contact with the material of the blouse. She didn't notice him staring at her. She was too busy getting her things organized.

"What is James doing?"

"Pulling girls. He's been getting caught all over Hogwarts. The randy bastard."

Lucius laughed. "That's the age."

"I'm assuming you were the same way." She sat herself down.

"Oh, yes. Though not just with girls."

"Of course," Ginny said, shaking her head.

"It was a different time, Ginevra. When I went to school. Everybody was involved with everybody."

"Who did you first kiss—boy or girl?"

Lucius thought for a moment. "I'm not sure. Boy, perhaps. The Slytherin dormitories were notoriously liberal in the 1960s and 1970s. Which is when I was there. Well, really, the whole world was notoriously liberal then."

"I wouldn't know," she said, and he realised that she was taking a dig at his age.

He decided to dig back.

"Were you sore?"

"What?" She looked shocked.

"After we had sex. Were you sore?"

He gave her credit—she didn't blush. She stared at him for a moment, as if trying to figure out his aim, and then she nodded.

"I bled for a few days."

All of a sudden he was so hard he could barely think. Something about that statement—that he had marked her, scored her so thoroughly on the inside that she had bled—aroused him. Incredibly so.

"But?"

She looked at him with an exasperated look. "But what?"

"But?" He prodded at her again.

"But it was worth it."

Of course it had been worth it. He hadn't had the carpet cleaned in that room yet. He didn't think he ever would.

"I'm sorry that I yelled at you about Draco."

She gave him an odd look. "What?"

"I lost my temper, and I shouldn't have."

"You were jealous," she said, and her voice was a croon.

He gritted his teeth.

"Say it."

He was silent.

"Say it, Lucius."

As she said his name he remembered how she had said his name before—before, when he was on top of her and inside of her—how she had cried _Lucius, god, please, Lucius_ in between whatever rough and animalistic sounds they had made, how she had said _Lucius, please, Lucius, Lucius_. Maybe she didn't remember. Maybe he was making it up.

Ginny watched him. He was staring at her.

"I was jealous."

But it wasn't spoken with any malice. He enunciated each word with devastating calm and intent, and she felt heat up and down her thighs just from watching him speak.

"Glad you admitted it."

She bent her head to write a shaky note.

"Idiot," she mumbled.

"I heard that."

"I _know_."

He rolled his eyes and scratched absentmindedly at his wrist with one hand.

"What do you want to talk about today?"

"The dark arts," she said, completely calm, no stammering at all. He gave her a look that seemed to be impressed.

"Straight for the jugular."

"Obviously."

Lucius tilted his neck back and forth, and she heard it crack from across the room.

"Ask."

This was dangerous ground they were treading on, this eerie détente, this pretending at openness. He was prepared to answer as much as he could without giving away all of his secrets—but then again, he did have secrets to share. That was the thing about those secrets. If you kept them inside of you, they shredded you up. He had them to spare.

Ginny stood.

"Well, this is clearly a wooden floor, and from the way my footsteps sound, I know that there's something down there. Storage place?"

He laughed.

"You're very smart. Ginevra mine."

_Ginevra mine?_ Two bright minds wheeled helplessly at that slip.

"—But it's a decoy."

"Why would you make a decoy so difficult to find, then?"

"See, you're smarter than most people, though you don't always think so."

His words were so much more prescient than she would ever admit, and they cut to her heart, no turnstiles, just throughways.

He continued. "And because you're smarter than most, you've stumbled upon the third-least important decoy."

"On a scale…"

Lucius laughed. "No. That I won't tell you. Although…" He paused, and thought. "I could give you free rein of the manor and let you find what you find, see what you can see. You'd have to be a brave soul to do that, though. Sometimes people get—lost."

"I'm sure they do," Ginny said, her palms a little sweaty. "But Lucius" and here she saw his shoulders roll forward towards her even she was sure he didn't want to show that. "why the dark arts at all?"

He thought again, and took a much longer time of it. When he answered, his mouth had dried together and so there was a dull click as he opened it.

"I shall give you one level of one answer today." She nodded. "The dark arts are so beautifully insidious. They call out to you, like the Slug Club—you know. You were in that." She nodded again. There was something too viscous and deep about the way he was speaking, almost in commiseration, and she didn't want to mar it with her words. "They call out to you because…because they attract sometimes the best and brightest. They are a bigger challenge. To be able to muck about with human life and human desires—love, lust, anger, betrayal—to be able to make potions or spells that adjust and alter those—it's a heady thing, Ginevra. You'd be good at. You would have been good at it. And I was good at it—at being sucked into it, completely cognisant of what I was doing. An opal necklace that took lives, that cost galleons beyond measure. A feather that wrote vitriol to whomever it drew up letters to. Art, Ginevra. My relics are sometimes art. And sometimes mementos. And sometimes weaponry, things that got me through a specific time. But mostly, I do not have to worry about secret caches because so much of my dark arts lives here." He lifted one long finger to his temple.

She was speechless, writing maniacally to get every single hypnotic word down on paper.

There was a moment of quiet.

"I wanted to come inside of you."

The statement was so stark and so sexually blunt that Ginny's head jerked up, her word scrawled off unwritten on the page. Lucius had moved so quietly that she hadn't even heard him. He was now standing at his window, his hands clasped lightly behind his back, and he was looking out at the gardens.

Ginny was rendered speechless for a moment. Lucius turned his head to look back at her over his strong shoulder. She was struck with how—almost—coy he looked, his hair long and light down his back, his chin tucked to his shoulder, his eyes looking at her.

She met his eyes evenly.

"I wanted to send you home with my semen dripping out of you."

Maybe he was now trying to goad her by being perverse—but Ginny didn't find it perverse. She could feel her insides clench in arousal, but she sat still and stared placidly at him. Lucius raised his eyebrows to her, and then turned back, looking straight ahead out his windowpanes.

He continued talking.

"And if Potter had gone down on you, he would have tasted me."

Ginny closed her dossier with a muted _thwack_. Her hands were shaking, but mercifully, Lucius couldn't see it. He was still standing with his face to the windows. She thought that he was probably smiling that smug smile, and she frowned in reaction to that thought.

Ginny stood, and gathered her things.

As she turned to leave the library, effectively ending their session early, she looked behind her at Lucius' back, the length of his hair, his buttocks. She spoke.

"We're officially divorced, now."

She missed seeing Lucius turn in surprise. He only caught the door closing behind her.

* * *

><p>The letter arrived the next day, written on creamy parchment. Ginny pursed her lips as she saw the huge owl that delivered it. When she opened it, she flinched.<p>

_Come out for dinner with me._

That answer was easy. She picked up her pen and wrote directly on the letter.

_No way. _

She had really wanted to write _no way, buddy boy_, but that seemed too colloquial, as hilarious as it was. In all honesty, the whole damn thing was hilarious. He found herself tittering with ridiculous and unstoppable laughter as she watched the aft of his owl bobble away into the sky.

The next letter came back only an hour later.

_Alright, so then come over for dinner._

Ginny rolled her eyes.

_No._

_Yes._

_No._

_Yes. You ended our last session early, you ninny._

She took a few hours before finally responding.

_Fine_.

It wasn't giving in, really. She was making up the time that they had lost when she had ended their last session early. And that was what she told herself as she attached the letter to the owl's leg and sent it off.

* * *

><p>Ginny walked past him into the foyer of the Manor, taking off her cloak and handing it to him. Lucius raised his eyebrows at her treating him as if he were a house elf, but took her cloak anyways and hung it in the closet. This was decidedly <em>not<em> a date that they had agreed on for an interview, but she had to make the most of the situation in order to catch up.

_Yes, that. _

"You look nice," he said, blatantly running his eyes up and down her body.

"Thank you."

"I suppose we're celebrating your divorce tonight," he said, his voice smooth.

"No, we are _not_," she replied, making sure that her tone was firm. There was such potential for the situation to get so out of hand, and she wasn't sure that she wanted to fuck him again, despite the fact that she was wet already and that he was looking at her with a hard stare. There were so many odd, dangerous strings attached to that—to them. Once was fine. Twice—and more—was scary.

He laughed.

"Are you on edge?"

"Yes," she answered, honestly.

"You do look nice, though. You look like a woman for once."

"_Charming_."

She had spent more time than she had cared to admit on her appearance. It was only just a simple black dress that she was wearing, but she had wanted to look at least somewhat put-together, and so she had actually brushed her hair and pinned it up. And had worn a good bra. Not that he was going to see her underwear, but it was still nice to have on.

He was standing far too close to her, had somehow crept up on her during her ruminating.

"For chrissakes, Lucius," she snapped.

"You swear like a Muggle."

"They swear better than us!"

He still hadn't stepped off. If she wanted to, she could have reached out and flicked him on the nose. She supposed that she had known what sort of pact she was entering by coming here tonight, but it soothed her ego and her morals to pretend that she didn't.

He grabbed her hand with his and licked between their combined fingers in such a quick and erotic gesture that she lost her steel for a moment. And then—

"You think that you're going to get to fuck me tonight." Her voice was nastier than she meant it to be.

He laughed at her, and it was almost an unpleasant sound. "Aren't I?" He looked pointedly at her dress, at the soft swells of her breasts that were showing. "I've already fucked you. Remember? And despite your fighting, you certainly gave it up easily enough when it came down to it. How common."

He didn't want to be cruel to her like that, but with her verbally sparring like that, going straight for his throat with her awful words, especially when he had only just wanted to see her—still. He could hold his own. She was a mere child, when it really came down to it. And some of those thoughts were played on his face, because she reacted.

Ginny snarled and lunged towards him, pushing forward with the explosive power of her body. Lucius looked slightly surprised, but also reacted far faster than she had expected, snapping both of his arms up so that his forearms framed his shoulders, his hands grabbing her wrists in vise grips. She gritted her teeth and railed against him, shaking back and forth in his arms like a tree held in a storm.

"Let me go."

"Don't be stupid. But maybe this is what you like?" His ruminating wasn't cruel. It was more as though it had just dawned on him. He let go of her arms to see what she would do, and expected her to kick him in the testicles—of course, emasculating him—but instead she grabbed a large hank of his hair, moaning at his pained grunt, and she pulled his face down to hers. She directed his mouth away from hers, however, and pushed his lips into her neck.

Why was it like this? They were flames to tinder, sparking against each other, whether it was fighting or fucking. She was too old for this. He was too old for this. She was nearly forty. He was past sixty. They were supposed to be—what? She was supposed to be focusing on her divorce, her sullen teenaged children, avoiding Harry, and Lucius—he was supposed to be calming down, accepting older age, relaxing—

He bit her, hard, and she exhaled in a low, pressured sound. As his tongue ran up and down her neck, she resisted the urge to shudder. His tongue was broad and rough, and she pictured him pinning her down to the floor and licking between her legs, licking at her clitoris like a large cat, and she grunted at him.

"Yes. _Yes_." Her voice was stark in the emptiness of the darkened Manor hallway. He was sucking brutally at her skin, and Ginny realised that he was marking her. She pinched at his back, digging her fingernails in. "Fucker," she mumbled. "Fucking barbarian."

He exhaled against her neck, not quite laughing, and she was reminded of how horses breathed out, the undulating sound of animalism.

Ginny let him shove her up against the foyer wall, his hands pushing her skirt up around her waist, sliding under the band of her underpants, pulling them off of her so quickly that she forgot to breathe for a moment.

He held her underpants up, and brought them to his nose, inhaling deeply. Ginny watched, fascinated and horrified, as he closed his eyes briefly, cataloging her scent, her arousal. When he opened his eyes, he crammed the piece of clothing into the pocket of his trousers. She snapped her teeth at him, and he brought a hand up to her throat, holding her tightly, forcing her head back against the wall. With his other hand, he quickly undid the stays of his trousers, letting them fall to the floor, stepping out of them.

When he released her neck, his arms came under her, and he hefted her up in one solid motion, balancing her weight on his forearms.

"For an elderly person, you are certainly strong." Her words were meant to be cruel.

Lucius laughed sharply in her face, and then bit her jaw, sliding inside of her, so hard that he didn't need to use his hands to guide himself in.

Ginny swallowed audibly at the sensation, his stretching her, the thickened fire between her legs, and she crossed her arms over his back, one hand holding onto his hair, the other spanned across his ribs. His hands dug into the flesh of her legs.

He held her there for a moment, pausing, all the way inside of her, but not moving.

Ginny swallowed again, and he pulled back, staring at her hard. She didn't flinch but met his gaze evenly, the pulse in her throat ticking.

"Fuck me," she whispered onto his face, his mouth. "Fuck me hard."

She hadn't talked as filthy as she had been lately since she had been a young woman. But she wanted to impart onto Lucius the need that was curled inside of her—she needed him to batter her, to take her as hard as he could, to make her come as hard as she could around him, yell his name or obscenities or something, anything—just to shake it up, just to take her mind off of her grey family situation, her being alone.

Lucius made a sound that was halfway between a groan and a growl, and his fingers tightened on her skin as he moved—mercifully moved—and he began a hard, measured pace. Ginny threw her head back, hitting it against the mahogany-panelled wall, as that familiar burn started between her legs. He was holding her immobile at a phenomenal angle, and she felt her calves jerk uncontrollably, her hand winding tighter in his hair. She tugged, and he skipped a beat, his thrusts stuttering. She did it again, and he grunted, pushing her harder against the wall and in turn pushing deeper inside of her.

The portraits were staring at them, open-mouthed, and Ginny was so aroused just from the thought of it, at the thought of all of the pure-blooded relatives watching them fuck against the wall, and on Lucius' next in-stroke, a thoroughly wet sound rang out from between their bodies. She refused to be ashamed. Lucius swore out loud, and clenched his teeth. He was staring down between their bodies, watching the thick and wet length of himself disappear into her. He couldn't tear his eyes from the place. Ginny, in turn, watched his face, even as he watched the two of them fucking. He seemed almost amazed in the way they fit into each other.

He sped up, and she moved forward, burrowing her head into the thick muscle between his neck and his shoulder, keeping her face hidden from him. If she let her head hang back, it was going to knock against the wall from his demanding pace, and so she crossed her arms over his back, and held onto him, digging her nails in, gasping onto his skin.

Ginny loosened one of her arms and slid it down between their bodies, stroking her clitoris mercilessly, keeping her weight balanced on her forehead against his skin.

"Fuck," Lucius hissed as he watched her touch herself, and the filthy and colloquial words made her clench around him. "Touch yourself, touch yourself—" His words were almost sobbed, as a prayer of sorts.

Ginny came sharply, sinking her teeth into Lucius' thick shoulder, biting down so hard that he began to bleed. She cried out quietly into his skin, accidentally rubbing the blood across her cheek.

Lucius barked as he dropped one of her legs, unknowingly hoisting the other so high that she flinched as he drove into her again—because it was deep, it was too deep all of a sudden—as he surged into her in staccato bursts, and then she felt his semen hot inside of her, burning her up from inside, clinging to her.

He fell forward heavily, dropping her other leg, sliding out of her, his body leaning against her, pushing her into the wall. His head was buried in the crook of her neck, and hers in his. He was breathing quickly and raspingly through his nose, his breath cooling her damp skin. Ginny kept her arms around his broad back, her fingers stroking mindlessly. She felt his semen wet on her thighs, inside of her.

"I'm on birth control, by the way." Her words were murmured. "Thought you might like to know that."

He didn't raise his head. "Good."

As if she wanted another child. As if he needed another Malfoy heir. She felt his come drip out of her, thick and rich, and she wondered if it was falling onto the polished floor below her.

He reached between her legs, and she could feel his hand shaking because it ricocheted between her upper thighs, and he cupped that hand to her, and she realised that he was keeping the semen inside of her body.

She shuddered against him. All of a sudden she felt tired and almost ashamed at giving in to the basest instincts that she had. It was like she couldn't fucking _think _around him, now. Like once they had opened those gates, all of the residual anger—or grief, or insistence, or whatever it was that had been between them for their entire lives—ignited and came pouring out of her.

"Why do we keep doing this?" She reached behind his body and began un-sticking the ends of his hair from his damp back, doing it unthinkingly.

He held back the shudder that wanted to rumble through him. He couldn't help it. As soon as she touched his hair—ever—he had to fight the urge to become pliant, to moan.

Lucius' mouth pulled away her skin as he spoke. "Because I want to." His eyes tracked to her face. "You have blood all over your face." He looked down at his shoulder. "Christ." The blood from her wild bite had congealed on his skin, partway down his chest.

Ginny grimaced slightly, but didn't apologise. Lucius licked his thumb and wiped, hard, at the skin of her chin and her lips, cleaning the red off of her.

He licked his thumb, tasting his own blood, and then bent, almost jerkily, to her face, kissing her slowly, wetly. He tasted like metal and heat and salt. Ginny bit softly on his lower lip, and he pushed against her automatically, his body reacting accordingly. He made a sound into her own mouth, something between an exhalation and a groan, a wholly physical and brainless reaction, and his hands slid between her legs, playing softly in the thick wetness there. Her body twinged, out of her control as his fingertips brushed over her clitoris.

He moved from her lips to tug on her ear with his teeth. "You have the wettest, best cunt I've ever had." His words were murmured, low and damp, into her ear-whorls.

Ginny scratched her nails down his back in retaliation for his crudeness.

"I'm hungry," she replied.

It was not the response that he had been expecting from her, and so Lucius laughed, dropping his hands from between her legs and stepping slowly away from her. Ginny shrugged and pulled her dress down, extending her hand toward him, her fingers snapping.

"Give me my knickers."

"No," he said just as solidly, pulling his pants up over his legs. He turned away from her as he did it, propriety still in odd place, and she admired the hardened curves of his buttocks before the material of the pants covered them.

"I don't want you using them to do some sort of Death Eater voodoo magick," she sniped.

"You idiot," he replied, turning back to look at her.

And there it was—the reversion to being antagonistic, being snappy. Ginny felt more comfortable being cruel to him, anyway. He glared at her for a moment, and she sighed, pulling her dress down properly.

"Can we eat?" Ginny didn't smile at him as she spoke, but her eyelids softened a little, and his squared-off stance became less severe around the edges of his shoulders in response.

Lucius tilted his head at her, extending an arm.

"Because I'm still hungry."

"Of course you are," he said. Laughed. Laughed a little more, and she joined, and they laughed hard to each other, knowing it was a mistake, but laughing anyway.


End file.
